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Are we ready to just see satellites and no stars anymore?

• cosmosguru 6y ago
  Something that many in the astronomy community are asking https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/29/elon-musks-spacex-reducing-starlink-brightness-after-astronomy-complaints.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/29/elon-musks-spacex-reducing-s...
  • bpodgursky 6y ago
    The opacity desires of astronomy are different than human eyes. Painting satellites black (ongoing w/ Starlink) is enough to make them dark to the human eye.
• milesvp 6y ago
  I see a double edged sword here. We already have enough light pollution that stars are hard to see in most cities. That amount of pollution grows yearly as cost per lumen drops. The problem ground based astronomers are having is the pollution these low earth sats are having. This is the down side. What makes me hopeful is how much better orbital optics can be. Couple this with signal processing and scores of telescopes in orbit, and you could create a virtual lens many times larger and clearer than anything planet side. As the price for getting satellites into orbit drops I imagine astronomy having some pretty major breakthroughs. That’s at least my hope. Most of what I’ve been watching is low orbit satellites but I don’t know how high an orbit you’d want for the kinds of things I’m imagining.