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The astronomical community, in fact, did not expect it. (Go ahead and do an internet search before the first large Starlink batch was deployed... there was no o
by Robotbeat 3y ago
The astronomical community, in fact, did not expect it. (Go ahead and do an internet search before the first large Starlink batch was deployed... there was no outcry; in fact, there's a public comment period for such things, and if there HAD been concerns, they would've been raised there, but they were not. After the first launch, it was a shock to the astronomy community... And SpaceX was also surprised.) The astronomical community was just as surprised as SpaceX. SpaceX acted remarkably quickly in inventing several different brightness mitigations and deploying them within months.
As far as your claim that the latest sats, are worse, that contradicts what your link says in the abstract:
"The first of these [new V2 satellites], called Minis, are dimmer than Gen 1 Starlinks despite their greater size.
Photometric observations verify that brightness mitigation efforts employed by SpaceX reduce spacecraft luminosity
substantially"