7 ms·

Giant satellite outshines stars, sparking fresh concerns for astronomers

70 points by totalZero 4y ago

elsonrodriguez 4y ago
Certainly something should be done to reduce reflectivity, but so many of these pieces about the impact on astronomers are missing the longer view. The sky is going to get more and more crowded as we expand into space, and while terrestrial observatories are amazing, the future of space observation and exploration is, after all, in space. It's the destiny of the night sky to be filled with our spacecraft. This will surely impact terrestrial astronomy, but a falcon heavy costs $97 million, and would enable detection of threats we'd be otherwise blind to if we stuck to terrestrial observations.
- ISL 4y ago
  The long view is the one you see when you step outside on a clear night. It is important that everyone retains the option to have that perspective.
- pleb_nz 4y ago
  While I agree. I also feel sad that we have ruined nearly every place on earth and now we must ruin the night sky, one of the last untouched mostly natural places most people can view each day. Also, what gives the right of peoples in one country to ruin the night sky of others on the other side of the planet. It's not just about observatories and atronomers that we should consider. I hope we can solve and compromise and not just push forward without consulting and considering.
  - pishpash 4y ago
    You already can't see the Milky Way in the way that cave ancestors could see. The future will be advertisements in the sky and brightness 24/7. There will be no "night". But people born in the future will think it's just normal and "cool" or whatever slang they use then. If they want to imagine night they turn on that VR implant in their head to Sim 2022.
    - h0l0cube 4y ago
      > But people born in the future will think it's just normal and nice. We are ‘people born in the future’ compared to our cave ancestors, and I wager if you asked just about anyone if they thought an unobstructed milky way was ‘nicer’ than the diffuse haze of a city skyline, they’d almost unanimously pick the former.
      - bmitc 4y ago
        Do they think that strongly enough to change though?
        hawski 4y ago
        When a river gets polluted people do not think strongly enough to change. Now, why is that and why we still should strive to do better?
        geden 4y ago
        Do you think we’ve been ground down sufficiently by corrupt wholly self interested politicians, so just feel resigned to something like this? When we’ve fucked our biosphere with CO2, a much more dangerous issue we’ve failed to solve?
        h0l0cube 4y ago
        Collective action can help, but at an industrial scale, a functioning democracy is necessary to mitigate the tragedy of the commons. A functioning democracy requires an empowered and informed voting population. Corruption from industry seeks to minimise both. People need to fight for stronger democratic institutions if they believe the priorities of the majority should come first. And I’m betting the majority want to look up and see real stars
        TeMPOraL 4y ago
        Keep in mind that in this case, even a perfectly functioning democracy may not give you the result you expect: there are many of us here who would vote strongly for continued development of space industry and expansion into the solar system, even if would completely block Earth-based observations, because we believe developing Earth orbit is much more important than astronomy in general, and it also happens to be a necessary stepping stone to enabling affordable space-based observations, so we believe it'll ultimately benefit astronomy mid-to-long term.
  - antupis 4y ago
    Well if you live in city night sky was ruined already 100 years ago.
    - imiric 4y ago
      And now it will also be ruined if you live in nature. That's an awful attempt at an excuse that doesn't solve anything. We should be fighting to improve this situation, not be complacent and allow it to get worse.
      - Grimburger 4y ago
        The night sky is not ruined if you live rural, it's just like it is before, albeit with more higher magnitude fast moving objects.
        inawarminister 4y ago
        That reminds me of the story of an Old Believer Russian family that moved to Siberia around the 1920s and was only found again by Soviet miners in 1970s. The patriach of the family was not educated, but he and his children managed to infer that the fast moving stars newly risen in the 1950s to be man-made stars (satellites). Sorry. 1936-1978. Still Here you go: "though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on the moon, he adapted swiftly to the idea of satellites. The Lykovs had noticed them as early as the 1950s, when “the stars began to go quickly across the sky,” and Karp himself conceived a theory to explain this: “People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very like stars.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-rus...
        imiric 4y ago
        Give it a few years.
    - h0l0cube 4y ago
      I agree, but as air pollution improves around the world, that ruination is being reversed
  - saberdancer 4y ago
    This satellite is in a 500km orbit. It is in the shade most of the night. Same applies to Starlink satellites. I have a feeling many people forget about this.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    These satellites aren't affecting anyone except those with access to a radio observatory or a telescope which is probably far less than 1% of the population. It's hard to say this is ruining the night sky. No one can see these satellites with the naked eye. Even if you could, they are neat rather than ruining, unlike light pollution. The ISS looks like a really slow, dim shooting star if you can even spot it, which takes a fair deal of effort and concentration to not lose it.
  - hoseja 4y ago
    You do know how satellite flares work, right? You do know you can only see them when sun reflects off them, therefore they have to be near the horizon or soon after sunset, right? You have seen the ISS streak across the sky at -3 magnitude, correct?
  - clarionbell 4y ago
    You are looking at it wrong. It's not being ruined, it's being developed.
    - SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
      Much like the forests and plains were developed into vast concrete suburbs
      - TeMPOraL 4y ago
        Which ones? Most were developed into farms, cities and industrial zones. All directly responsible for pretty much every thing you're enjoying about your life. Sure, it would be even better to have both all the forests and plains, and all the food variety, telecommunication, transportation, lifespan and individual freedoms. But it was never a possibility. There was no path from there to here for humanity that didn't mean developing much of the land, cutting down much of the forests and poisoning much of the world - it's because we were (and still are) figuring things out as we went along, acting in an uncoordinated, distributed fashion. We could eventually restore much of what was; we can see the possibility now, but the path to it starts with developing Earth orbit. The way to get the forests and clear sky back without making life universally worse off leads through weathering the whining of astronomers as infrastructure, industry and habitation is being moved up the gravity well. (It's either that or making some huge leaps in biotech, but that's pretty much post-singularity regime, in the sense it's too hard - or too scary - to predict how the world would look like after working with DNA becomes as easy as working with code. Expanding to space sounds like a much safer option to pursue first :).)
    - richrichardsson 4y ago
      One could argue that you're looking at development as a purely positive thing.
- antupis 4y ago
  Is there some reason why we don't have small space telescopes, every project I know is rather large like JWT.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    It’s just physics. To see further and with higher resolution, you need larger apertures. The Event Horizon Telescope, the one that viewed the supermassive black holes a couple of years ago, is effectively the size of Earth.
    - wumpus 4y ago
      To comment on this a little more, it would be way out of our budget to abandon our telescopes on earth and do it all from space.
      - mjevans 4y ago
        Still thinking inside the box, and the gravity well. The cost effective solution is to move manufacturing to micro-G environments. The Moon might do as a good baby step, followed by robots in the belt.
        wumpus 4y ago
        What a great idea! Can you point at a concrete explanation of how it is affordable with astronomy's budget?
        fragmede 4y ago
        One word: mining. The moon has literal tons of helium-3 that, if brought back to Earth, would tank the market. yes it's a bit capital intensive too get started but the payoff is huge! Just need to borrow the particle physicists' budget for a second.
        hutzlibu 4y ago
- tsujamin 4y ago
  > a falcon heavy costs $97 million, and would enable detection of threats we'd be otherwise blind to if we stuck to terrestrial observations. What's the cost of a space-based detection platform compared to a ground based one, and does it impact whether such platforms get built in the future? Overall I think its the impact on and complete disregard for radio astronomy that gets be about this. I'm sure you're not allowed to do high-decibel audio experiments next to the founder's house, but regulations prohibiting radio emissions affecting particular pockets of land are up for grabs?
  - walrus01 4y ago
    FCC regulations on what you can transmit legally (and with appropriate category of license, for things like new FM broadcasters and OTA TV stations) in all the VHF, UHF, S and L bands, and part 101 microwave bands are actually quite stringent.
- libraryatnight 4y ago
  Destiny my ass. Glad you're that optimistic.
  - oblak 4y ago
    "I am going to kill you. It is your destiny"
- beebeepka 4y ago
  You really think they are launching satellites to look for external threats rather than spy on everything down the well?
  - ben_w 4y ago
    IIRC, the Hubble only happened because there was a spare spy satellite that could be converted into a tool for science. That origin doesn't mean Hubble doesn't do science.
    - welterde 4y ago
      Not quite. HST was initially supposed to be a 3m telescope, but they had to go down a bit in size for budget reasons. And the reason for going for exactly 2.4m (instead of 2.5m or 2.2m) was that they could save even more money, because the mirror size of the military spy satellites was exactly the same and they could use some of the same manufacturing process. The rest of the satellite is quite different to a spy satellite however.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        Good update, thanks for the correction :)
  - lioeters 4y ago
    ¿Por qué no los dos? Ice cream and cake, why not both.
    - lioeters 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS
- wumpus 4y ago
  > are missing the longer view. I love all the condescending comments like this one.
  - forgetfreeman 4y ago
    SV hypercapitalists have a storied history of siding with industry regardless of what flavor of paperclip-factory-esque 2nd order effects result.
    - elsonrodriguez 4y ago
      Star Trek is basically space communism, and their skies are filled with megastructures that put our current dilemma to shame. It’s not about siding with industry or some economic philosophy. It’s that humanity, on a long enough timeframe, is either leaving or dying.
      - forgetfreeman 4y ago
        That is certainly the prevalent narrative and yet we've got roughly 4.5 billion years to solve the sun-eating-the-earth problem. Shitting on our dominant modes of asteroid detection to try to compete for saturated market space (cell service are you fucking kidding me) advances no species preservation goals.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Launch costs are a fairly small part of most space telescopes. Even for something like Hubble which required multiple incredibly expensive shuttle launches, <10%. Sure, if you treat the telescopes themselves as disposable you can bring R&D costs down a bit. But imagine how hard it would be to build something like the Square Kilometer Array in space (keep in mind it'll already cost billions to build it on Earth). You'd need hundreds of launches to get each of the 50 ft dishes to space. Not to mention the difficulties of on orbit assembly. And of course before you do that you have to figure out how to do interferometry in space. AFAIK it's only been done reliably at very long wavelengths, except for a few demonstrators that required non-scalable physical connections. I don't think it'd impossible, but it requires some huge advances in both science and engineering (submillimeter positioning, cryocoolers with orders of magnitude improvement at passing vibe checks, etc)
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  "It's the destiny of the night sky to be filled with our spacecraft." Really ? Says who, tech bros ? Why would anyone impose their view of their world in the entire planet ? We have consistently been destroying the magic of existence.
- asadotzler 4y ago
  When we got serious about electrification a century ago, we also damaged or destroyed a whole generation of of great observatories with our light pollution. Was that a good trade? The night skies ruined for half the population. Important scientific efforts pushed to more distant and expensive locations. But also, electricity for hundreds of millions of people in the blink of an eye! I think I agree with the early 20th century's prioritization there. Astronomy is going to lose another generation of observatories and see degraded capabilities in some survivors because, just as it was the right thing to do with electrification, bringing broadband to hundreds of millions of people who live in under-served rural communities delivers more progress to society than the small fraction of time sensitive science that may be lost, interrupted, or delayed as we pivot planning and resources to even more exciting and capable telescopes safe distances (for now) from ever-increasing challenge of local light and radio pollution. And just as it did a century ago, astronomy is going to move further away from civilization, this time to Earth orbit and the Moon. Today we're capable of putting 5 times the Hubble mass into orbit with a single launch for less than $100 million. Within a decade, that'll likely drop to maybe $10 million to lift something like 10 times Hubble's mass in a single go. We can have large-scale orbital telescopes if we want them. And they can be affordable, well considerably more affordable than was historically possible for orbital observatories. Because launch will be dirt cheap and super-sized, these telescopes won't have to be optimized for size and weight or even long term survivability. Sure, the precision optics aren't getting cheaper quickly, but every other component and set of manufacturing tolerances can be had or done much cheaper. Don't spend 5-10X on that radiation hardened chip. Instead, send up 2 regular priced chips with some extra shielding and software that makes sure they both agree that neither one of them have been hit by a disruptive particle. Aerospace aluminum precision milling and robotic friction stir welding? Screw that, let's stick weld some steel. Satellites are going to be a significant part of delivering modern broadband to the world's rural populations. LEO Constellations have modest capabilities, limited heavily by the physics of radios. But they can be deployed more swiftly to more people than fiber or cable. In 10 years, we will high speed broadband available for literally all locations on the globe, from at least one but likely several different providers. Capacity will be the constellation operators' biggest challenge. Governments will increasingly turn to the LEO operators for connecting their hard to reach rural populations, delivering large subsidies and other incentives. The demand will far outstrip what the available spectrum will support. Billions of people will want access to networks that will only be able to support hundreds of millions at best. Whether or not spectrum efficiency will allow satellite constellations to compete in the long run or not, I can't say. But for the next two or three decades for sure they're going to be an increasing presence in the sky. I don't think there's any going back. So, what about astronomy. Easy, as noted above, we do what we did a century ago and have been doing for ages, we pony up and pay to keep on doing the science, even if it has to be more remote, more expensive, and more difficult. We should commit ourselves, just like we did a century ago, to helping the most affected segments of astronomy move as quickly as possible. We can start by re-designing our in-progress next generation observatories to be either cheap and disposable or permanent and future proof orbital science platforms that we can start launching this decade and the next. And let us also invest in establishing the regular movement of humans to and from the Moon so that we can build scientific outposts and observatories of all kinds, but in particular a few great radio telescopes protected by the Moon itself from Earth's near deafening radio pollution. This is all within our reach, we have the technology to make it happen and for a modest public and private investment we can do right by the scientific community that brings not only so much understanding, but also such richness and meaning to so many of our lives. All over the world, we must vote in representatives that will support public funding to go hand in hand with charitable and philanthropic spending, and perhaps even inviting commercial investment, to help this noble and enlightening branch of science move forward so that it can continue to help carry our civilization forward.
larkinrichards 4y ago
> AST SpaceMobile has yet to respond to astronomers’ requests to clue them into its satellite’s whereabouts Blue Walker 3 TLE is published and available via a few trackers, what are they complaining about here?
- wumpus 4y ago
  TLEs come with a variety of precision. The gold standard right now is for the satellite owner to have GPS on the satellite and publish it.
DarmokJalad1701 4y ago
> AST SpaceMobile has yet to respond to astronomers’ requests to clue them into its satellite’s whereabouts https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=53807 https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=53807 There ya go. Courtesy of the United States govt.
Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
I'm pretty sure I saw it in recent days, I went out on my back porch where I saw Jupiter in the sky... and then another Jupiter (same color/apparent magnitude) just coasting away on its satellite track. This thing was bright, I've seen the International Space Station and this was way brighter, and flared a bit when the sunlight caught it right.
can16358p 4y ago
> antenna array as big as a highway billboard I don't get it, how can something actually that small can reflect so much light? I mean, it's high up in the orbit, and an object at a height of the orbit with a size of billboard should be super small. I know it's reflecting sunlight and in darkness it shines a lot, but still I can't wrap my head around how such a small (relatively, to space) object can create some much reflection. I know what ISS can do and I regularly observe its passes and how bright it is, but ISS is much, much bigger.
- Doxin 4y ago
  If there's a reflection path from you to the sun hitting the panel, you're looking at a billboard-sized panel that's roughly as bright as the sun. It's far away, yes, but the stuff you're trying to look at is much much farther away, and much much less bright.
- ohmahjong 4y ago
  There must be some diffusion/refraction from all of the atmospheric particles as well, right? I don't think you'd be able to see it as a bright rectangular object so much as a bright fuzzy blob in the sky.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Have you ever been in an airplane during a sunny day? You can get blinded by reflections from small objects like windows, or even sparkling from water and the like. And that's sunlight that's gone through the atmosphere and back up for up to 10 kilometers, this one gets hit by direct sunlight. I'd say that absorbent or light diffusing material should be mandatory, but absorbent material would mean the surface gets really hot.
  - schiffern 4y ago
    >absorbent or light diffusing material should be mandatory Absorbency is bad because it causes overheating and IR astronomy pollution. Diffusion is bad because it reflects light toward Earth. Specular surfaces (mirrors) can reflect light entirely into space and away from observers on the ground. This explains why SpaceX created their own radio-transparent, space-rated mirror. They are offering it—at cost—for use by other satellite manufacturers. https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-shares-how-its-making-starlink-satellite-less-bright/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-shares-how-its-making-starl... https://planet4589.org/astro/starsim/2022-05-07_SpaceX_Sustainability_for_FAS_V3.pdf https://planet4589.org/astro/starsim/2022-05-07_SpaceX_Susta...
whitehexagon 4y ago
BlueWalker 3 is already being tracked by some of the night sky tracker websites, maybe get to see it next week here, but so far reported to have a brightness similar to a 1st magnitude star. The same company plans to launch 100 more larger 'BlueBird' satellites (mobile comms?). I had my telescope out a few nights ago and joked about a small child of the near future asking 'What's wrong with that star, it doesn't move...'
system2 4y ago
It is sad for backyard astronomers but I am more concerned about these satellites falling onto our heads one day. When a 3rd world country starts sending their satellites with poor development this is going to be unavoidable. Another fear is ahead.
- imiric 4y ago
  I'm looking forward to that scenario. Let them burn. What a wonderful sight that will be.
tigerlily 4y ago
> Giant satellite At first glance I thought this was in reference to the Moon. During last week's lunar eclipse I enjoyed viewing conditions perfect for spotting faint Uranus through my 70 mm refractor. I woke my wife and she and I checked out Jupiter, Saturn, and later on Mars, which she spotted by chance coming up over the horizon. Lunar eclipses are great opportunities for seeing some truly wondrous sights.
saberdancer 4y ago
500km orbit. It will be in the dark most of the night. They may lose some early evening/morning observation quality but it shouldn't be that bad for the rest of it.
- jxf 4y ago
  Now multiply that by the 100 satellites the company plans to launch. Now multiply _that_ by the other companies that want to launch satellites.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    You'll have 100 dark satellites at night, so what? These birds are visible only for an hour or so after sundown and before sunrise.
    - jxf 4y ago
      I think you're forgetting that astronomers care about wavelengths of light other than visible light — that is a very, very narrow range of the spectrum of radiation. In the infrared, for example, every satellite looks like a blazing star. In the radio spectrum, every satellite that transmits signals in this band looks hundreds of thousands of times brighter than a star.
- retSava 4y ago
  Now perhaps, but the plan is for plenty more.
d--b 4y ago
If it's that large, is it possible to shoot it out of the way using a giant laser? :-)
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Probably not; if it's a ground-based laser, it would have to get through the atmosphere first which causes a lot of diffusion. Second, it reflects the sunlight, surely it reflects laser light too :p. That said, I'm pretty confident there's weapons grade lasers in orbit designed to take out or at least disrupt sattelites. They've just not been used yet because that would show their owners' hands.
aaron695 4y ago
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Not an astronomer. How does this compare to eg. starlink? I mean... this is bigger and brighter, but there is one (1) of "this", and that should probably be relatively easy to filter out(?). Do systems such as stalink with a "bajillion" of small satellites have any effect on (radio)astronomy?
- schiffern 4y ago
  >there is one (1) of "this" Not for long! It's a subscale prototype for a constellation of up to 243 satellites, each of them being 7x larger in size. https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ast-spacemobile-bluebird-launch-contract/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ast-spacemobile-bluebird-la...
borissk 4y ago
Another bad news for astronomy and this is just the beginning: BlueWalker 3 is a prototype for a constellation of 168 even larger satellites called BlueBirds.

70 points by totalZero 4y ago

Certainly something should be done to reduce reflectivity, but so many of these pieces about the impact on astronomers are missing the longer view. The sky is going to get more and more crowded as we expand into space, and while terrestrial observatories are amazing, the future of space observation and exploration is, after all, in space. It's the destiny of the night sky to be filled with our spacecraft. This will surely impact terrestrial astronomy, but a falcon heavy costs $97 million, and would enable detection of threats we'd be otherwise blind to if we stuck to terrestrial observations.

ISL 4y ago
The long view is the one you see when you step outside on a clear night. It is important that everyone retains the option to have that perspective.
pleb_nz 4y ago
While I agree. I also feel sad that we have ruined nearly every place on earth and now we must ruin the night sky, one of the last untouched mostly natural places most people can view each day. Also, what gives the right of peoples in one country to ruin the night sky of others on the other side of the planet. It's not just about observatories and atronomers that we should consider. I hope we can solve and compromise and not just push forward without consulting and considering.
- pishpash 4y ago
  You already can't see the Milky Way in the way that cave ancestors could see. The future will be advertisements in the sky and brightness 24/7. There will be no "night". But people born in the future will think it's just normal and "cool" or whatever slang they use then. If they want to imagine night they turn on that VR implant in their head to Sim 2022.
  - h0l0cube 4y ago
    > But people born in the future will think it's just normal and nice. We are ‘people born in the future’ compared to our cave ancestors, and I wager if you asked just about anyone if they thought an unobstructed milky way was ‘nicer’ than the diffuse haze of a city skyline, they’d almost unanimously pick the former.
    - bmitc 4y ago
      Do they think that strongly enough to change though?
      - hawski 4y ago
        When a river gets polluted people do not think strongly enough to change. Now, why is that and why we still should strive to do better?
      - geden 4y ago
        Do you think we’ve been ground down sufficiently by corrupt wholly self interested politicians, so just feel resigned to something like this? When we’ve fucked our biosphere with CO2, a much more dangerous issue we’ve failed to solve?
      - h0l0cube 4y ago
        Collective action can help, but at an industrial scale, a functioning democracy is necessary to mitigate the tragedy of the commons. A functioning democracy requires an empowered and informed voting population. Corruption from industry seeks to minimise both. People need to fight for stronger democratic institutions if they believe the priorities of the majority should come first. And I’m betting the majority want to look up and see real stars
        TeMPOraL 4y ago
        Keep in mind that in this case, even a perfectly functioning democracy may not give you the result you expect: there are many of us here who would vote strongly for continued development of space industry and expansion into the solar system, even if would completely block Earth-based observations, because we believe developing Earth orbit is much more important than astronomy in general, and it also happens to be a necessary stepping stone to enabling affordable space-based observations, so we believe it'll ultimately benefit astronomy mid-to-long term.
- antupis 4y ago
  Well if you live in city night sky was ruined already 100 years ago.
  - imiric 4y ago
    And now it will also be ruined if you live in nature. That's an awful attempt at an excuse that doesn't solve anything. We should be fighting to improve this situation, not be complacent and allow it to get worse.
    - Grimburger 4y ago
      The night sky is not ruined if you live rural, it's just like it is before, albeit with more higher magnitude fast moving objects.
      - inawarminister 4y ago
        That reminds me of the story of an Old Believer Russian family that moved to Siberia around the 1920s and was only found again by Soviet miners in 1970s. The patriach of the family was not educated, but he and his children managed to infer that the fast moving stars newly risen in the 1950s to be man-made stars (satellites). Sorry. 1936-1978. Still Here you go: "though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on the moon, he adapted swiftly to the idea of satellites. The Lykovs had noticed them as early as the 1950s, when “the stars began to go quickly across the sky,” and Karp himself conceived a theory to explain this: “People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very like stars.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-rus...
      - imiric 4y ago
        Give it a few years.
  - h0l0cube 4y ago
    I agree, but as air pollution improves around the world, that ruination is being reversed
- saberdancer 4y ago
  This satellite is in a 500km orbit. It is in the shade most of the night. Same applies to Starlink satellites. I have a feeling many people forget about this.
- googlryas 4y ago
  These satellites aren't affecting anyone except those with access to a radio observatory or a telescope which is probably far less than 1% of the population. It's hard to say this is ruining the night sky. No one can see these satellites with the naked eye. Even if you could, they are neat rather than ruining, unlike light pollution. The ISS looks like a really slow, dim shooting star if you can even spot it, which takes a fair deal of effort and concentration to not lose it.
- hoseja 4y ago
  You do know how satellite flares work, right? You do know you can only see them when sun reflects off them, therefore they have to be near the horizon or soon after sunset, right? You have seen the ISS streak across the sky at -3 magnitude, correct?
- clarionbell 4y ago
  You are looking at it wrong. It's not being ruined, it's being developed.
  - SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
    Much like the forests and plains were developed into vast concrete suburbs
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      Which ones? Most were developed into farms, cities and industrial zones. All directly responsible for pretty much every thing you're enjoying about your life. Sure, it would be even better to have both all the forests and plains, and all the food variety, telecommunication, transportation, lifespan and individual freedoms. But it was never a possibility. There was no path from there to here for humanity that didn't mean developing much of the land, cutting down much of the forests and poisoning much of the world - it's because we were (and still are) figuring things out as we went along, acting in an uncoordinated, distributed fashion. We could eventually restore much of what was; we can see the possibility now, but the path to it starts with developing Earth orbit. The way to get the forests and clear sky back without making life universally worse off leads through weathering the whining of astronomers as infrastructure, industry and habitation is being moved up the gravity well. (It's either that or making some huge leaps in biotech, but that's pretty much post-singularity regime, in the sense it's too hard - or too scary - to predict how the world would look like after working with DNA becomes as easy as working with code. Expanding to space sounds like a much safer option to pursue first :).)
  - richrichardsson 4y ago
    One could argue that you're looking at development as a purely positive thing.
antupis 4y ago
Is there some reason why we don't have small space telescopes, every project I know is rather large like JWT.
- bmitc 4y ago
  It’s just physics. To see further and with higher resolution, you need larger apertures. The Event Horizon Telescope, the one that viewed the supermassive black holes a couple of years ago, is effectively the size of Earth.
  - wumpus 4y ago
    To comment on this a little more, it would be way out of our budget to abandon our telescopes on earth and do it all from space.
    - mjevans 4y ago
      Still thinking inside the box, and the gravity well. The cost effective solution is to move manufacturing to micro-G environments. The Moon might do as a good baby step, followed by robots in the belt.
      - wumpus 4y ago
        What a great idea! Can you point at a concrete explanation of how it is affordable with astronomy's budget?
        fragmede 4y ago
        One word: mining. The moon has literal tons of helium-3 that, if brought back to Earth, would tank the market. yes it's a bit capital intensive too get started but the payoff is huge! Just need to borrow the particle physicists' budget for a second.
        hutzlibu 4y ago
tsujamin 4y ago
> a falcon heavy costs $97 million, and would enable detection of threats we'd be otherwise blind to if we stuck to terrestrial observations. What's the cost of a space-based detection platform compared to a ground based one, and does it impact whether such platforms get built in the future? Overall I think its the impact on and complete disregard for radio astronomy that gets be about this. I'm sure you're not allowed to do high-decibel audio experiments next to the founder's house, but regulations prohibiting radio emissions affecting particular pockets of land are up for grabs?
- walrus01 4y ago
  FCC regulations on what you can transmit legally (and with appropriate category of license, for things like new FM broadcasters and OTA TV stations) in all the VHF, UHF, S and L bands, and part 101 microwave bands are actually quite stringent.
libraryatnight 4y ago
Destiny my ass. Glad you're that optimistic.
- oblak 4y ago
  "I am going to kill you. It is your destiny"
beebeepka 4y ago
You really think they are launching satellites to look for external threats rather than spy on everything down the well?
- ben_w 4y ago
  IIRC, the Hubble only happened because there was a spare spy satellite that could be converted into a tool for science. That origin doesn't mean Hubble doesn't do science.
  - welterde 4y ago
    Not quite. HST was initially supposed to be a 3m telescope, but they had to go down a bit in size for budget reasons. And the reason for going for exactly 2.4m (instead of 2.5m or 2.2m) was that they could save even more money, because the mirror size of the military spy satellites was exactly the same and they could use some of the same manufacturing process. The rest of the satellite is quite different to a spy satellite however.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Good update, thanks for the correction :)
- lioeters 4y ago
  ¿Por qué no los dos? Ice cream and cake, why not both.
  - lioeters 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS
wumpus 4y ago
> are missing the longer view. I love all the condescending comments like this one.
- forgetfreeman 4y ago
  SV hypercapitalists have a storied history of siding with industry regardless of what flavor of paperclip-factory-esque 2nd order effects result.
  - elsonrodriguez 4y ago
    Star Trek is basically space communism, and their skies are filled with megastructures that put our current dilemma to shame. It’s not about siding with industry or some economic philosophy. It’s that humanity, on a long enough timeframe, is either leaving or dying.
    - forgetfreeman 4y ago
      That is certainly the prevalent narrative and yet we've got roughly 4.5 billion years to solve the sun-eating-the-earth problem. Shitting on our dominant modes of asteroid detection to try to compete for saturated market space (cell service are you fucking kidding me) advances no species preservation goals.
Rebelgecko 4y ago
Launch costs are a fairly small part of most space telescopes. Even for something like Hubble which required multiple incredibly expensive shuttle launches, <10%. Sure, if you treat the telescopes themselves as disposable you can bring R&D costs down a bit. But imagine how hard it would be to build something like the Square Kilometer Array in space (keep in mind it'll already cost billions to build it on Earth). You'd need hundreds of launches to get each of the 50 ft dishes to space. Not to mention the difficulties of on orbit assembly. And of course before you do that you have to figure out how to do interferometry in space. AFAIK it's only been done reliably at very long wavelengths, except for a few demonstrators that required non-scalable physical connections. I don't think it'd impossible, but it requires some huge advances in both science and engineering (submillimeter positioning, cryocoolers with orders of magnitude improvement at passing vibe checks, etc)
4gotunameagain 4y ago
"It's the destiny of the night sky to be filled with our spacecraft." Really ? Says who, tech bros ? Why would anyone impose their view of their world in the entire planet ? We have consistently been destroying the magic of existence.
asadotzler 4y ago
When we got serious about electrification a century ago, we also damaged or destroyed a whole generation of of great observatories with our light pollution. Was that a good trade? The night skies ruined for half the population. Important scientific efforts pushed to more distant and expensive locations. But also, electricity for hundreds of millions of people in the blink of an eye! I think I agree with the early 20th century's prioritization there. Astronomy is going to lose another generation of observatories and see degraded capabilities in some survivors because, just as it was the right thing to do with electrification, bringing broadband to hundreds of millions of people who live in under-served rural communities delivers more progress to society than the small fraction of time sensitive science that may be lost, interrupted, or delayed as we pivot planning and resources to even more exciting and capable telescopes safe distances (for now) from ever-increasing challenge of local light and radio pollution. And just as it did a century ago, astronomy is going to move further away from civilization, this time to Earth orbit and the Moon. Today we're capable of putting 5 times the Hubble mass into orbit with a single launch for less than $100 million. Within a decade, that'll likely drop to maybe $10 million to lift something like 10 times Hubble's mass in a single go. We can have large-scale orbital telescopes if we want them. And they can be affordable, well considerably more affordable than was historically possible for orbital observatories. Because launch will be dirt cheap and super-sized, these telescopes won't have to be optimized for size and weight or even long term survivability. Sure, the precision optics aren't getting cheaper quickly, but every other component and set of manufacturing tolerances can be had or done much cheaper. Don't spend 5-10X on that radiation hardened chip. Instead, send up 2 regular priced chips with some extra shielding and software that makes sure they both agree that neither one of them have been hit by a disruptive particle. Aerospace aluminum precision milling and robotic friction stir welding? Screw that, let's stick weld some steel. Satellites are going to be a significant part of delivering modern broadband to the world's rural populations. LEO Constellations have modest capabilities, limited heavily by the physics of radios. But they can be deployed more swiftly to more people than fiber or cable. In 10 years, we will high speed broadband available for literally all locations on the globe, from at least one but likely several different providers. Capacity will be the constellation operators' biggest challenge. Governments will increasingly turn to the LEO operators for connecting their hard to reach rural populations, delivering large subsidies and other incentives. The demand will far outstrip what the available spectrum will support. Billions of people will want access to networks that will only be able to support hundreds of millions at best. Whether or not spectrum efficiency will allow satellite constellations to compete in the long run or not, I can't say. But for the next two or three decades for sure they're going to be an increasing presence in the sky. I don't think there's any going back. So, what about astronomy. Easy, as noted above, we do what we did a century ago and have been doing for ages, we pony up and pay to keep on doing the science, even if it has to be more remote, more expensive, and more difficult. We should commit ourselves, just like we did a century ago, to helping the most affected segments of astronomy move as quickly as possible. We can start by re-designing our in-progress next generation observatories to be either cheap and disposable or permanent and future proof orbital science platforms that we can start launching this decade and the next. And let us also invest in establishing the regular movement of humans to and from the Moon so that we can build scientific outposts and observatories of all kinds, but in particular a few great radio telescopes protected by the Moon itself from Earth's near deafening radio pollution. This is all within our reach, we have the technology to make it happen and for a modest public and private investment we can do right by the scientific community that brings not only so much understanding, but also such richness and meaning to so many of our lives. All over the world, we must vote in representatives that will support public funding to go hand in hand with charitable and philanthropic spending, and perhaps even inviting commercial investment, to help this noble and enlightening branch of science move forward so that it can continue to help carry our civilization forward.

larkinrichards 4y ago

> AST SpaceMobile has yet to respond to astronomers’ requests to clue them into its satellite’s whereabouts Blue Walker 3 TLE is published and available via a few trackers, what are they complaining about here?

wumpus 4y ago
TLEs come with a variety of precision. The gold standard right now is for the satellite owner to have GPS on the satellite and publish it.

DarmokJalad1701 4y ago

> AST SpaceMobile has yet to respond to astronomers’ requests to clue them into its satellite’s whereabouts https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=53807 https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=53807 There ya go. Courtesy of the United States govt.

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago

I'm pretty sure I saw it in recent days, I went out on my back porch where I saw Jupiter in the sky... and then another Jupiter (same color/apparent magnitude) just coasting away on its satellite track. This thing was bright, I've seen the International Space Station and this was way brighter, and flared a bit when the sunlight caught it right.

can16358p 4y ago

> antenna array as big as a highway billboard I don't get it, how can something actually that small can reflect so much light? I mean, it's high up in the orbit, and an object at a height of the orbit with a size of billboard should be super small. I know it's reflecting sunlight and in darkness it shines a lot, but still I can't wrap my head around how such a small (relatively, to space) object can create some much reflection. I know what ISS can do and I regularly observe its passes and how bright it is, but ISS is much, much bigger.

Doxin 4y ago
If there's a reflection path from you to the sun hitting the panel, you're looking at a billboard-sized panel that's roughly as bright as the sun. It's far away, yes, but the stuff you're trying to look at is much much farther away, and much much less bright.
ohmahjong 4y ago
There must be some diffusion/refraction from all of the atmospheric particles as well, right? I don't think you'd be able to see it as a bright rectangular object so much as a bright fuzzy blob in the sky.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Have you ever been in an airplane during a sunny day? You can get blinded by reflections from small objects like windows, or even sparkling from water and the like. And that's sunlight that's gone through the atmosphere and back up for up to 10 kilometers, this one gets hit by direct sunlight. I'd say that absorbent or light diffusing material should be mandatory, but absorbent material would mean the surface gets really hot.
- schiffern 4y ago
  >absorbent or light diffusing material should be mandatory Absorbency is bad because it causes overheating and IR astronomy pollution. Diffusion is bad because it reflects light toward Earth. Specular surfaces (mirrors) can reflect light entirely into space and away from observers on the ground. This explains why SpaceX created their own radio-transparent, space-rated mirror. They are offering it—at cost—for use by other satellite manufacturers. https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-shares-how-its-making-starlink-satellite-less-bright/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-shares-how-its-making-starl... https://planet4589.org/astro/starsim/2022-05-07_SpaceX_Sustainability_for_FAS_V3.pdf https://planet4589.org/astro/starsim/2022-05-07_SpaceX_Susta...

whitehexagon 4y ago

BlueWalker 3 is already being tracked by some of the night sky tracker websites, maybe get to see it next week here, but so far reported to have a brightness similar to a 1st magnitude star. The same company plans to launch 100 more larger 'BlueBird' satellites (mobile comms?). I had my telescope out a few nights ago and joked about a small child of the near future asking 'What's wrong with that star, it doesn't move...'

system2 4y ago

It is sad for backyard astronomers but I am more concerned about these satellites falling onto our heads one day. When a 3rd world country starts sending their satellites with poor development this is going to be unavoidable. Another fear is ahead.

imiric 4y ago
I'm looking forward to that scenario. Let them burn. What a wonderful sight that will be.

tigerlily 4y ago

> Giant satellite At first glance I thought this was in reference to the Moon. During last week's lunar eclipse I enjoyed viewing conditions perfect for spotting faint Uranus through my 70 mm refractor. I woke my wife and she and I checked out Jupiter, Saturn, and later on Mars, which she spotted by chance coming up over the horizon. Lunar eclipses are great opportunities for seeing some truly wondrous sights.

saberdancer 4y ago

500km orbit. It will be in the dark most of the night. They may lose some early evening/morning observation quality but it shouldn't be that bad for the rest of it.

jxf 4y ago
Now multiply that by the 100 satellites the company plans to launch. Now multiply _that_ by the other companies that want to launch satellites.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  You'll have 100 dark satellites at night, so what? These birds are visible only for an hour or so after sundown and before sunrise.
  - jxf 4y ago
    I think you're forgetting that astronomers care about wavelengths of light other than visible light — that is a very, very narrow range of the spectrum of radiation. In the infrared, for example, every satellite looks like a blazing star. In the radio spectrum, every satellite that transmits signals in this band looks hundreds of thousands of times brighter than a star.
retSava 4y ago
Now perhaps, but the plan is for plenty more.

d--b 4y ago

If it's that large, is it possible to shoot it out of the way using a giant laser? :-)

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Probably not; if it's a ground-based laser, it would have to get through the atmosphere first which causes a lot of diffusion. Second, it reflects the sunlight, surely it reflects laser light too :p. That said, I'm pretty confident there's weapons grade lasers in orbit designed to take out or at least disrupt sattelites. They've just not been used yet because that would show their owners' hands.

aaron695 4y ago

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

Not an astronomer. How does this compare to eg. starlink? I mean... this is bigger and brighter, but there is one (1) of "this", and that should probably be relatively easy to filter out(?). Do systems such as stalink with a "bajillion" of small satellites have any effect on (radio)astronomy?

schiffern 4y ago
>there is one (1) of "this" Not for long! It's a subscale prototype for a constellation of up to 243 satellites, each of them being 7x larger in size. https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ast-spacemobile-bluebird-launch-contract/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ast-spacemobile-bluebird-la...

borissk 4y ago

Another bad news for astronomy and this is just the beginning: BlueWalker 3 is a prototype for a constellation of 168 even larger satellites called BlueBirds.