Will Starlink & Other Satellite Networks Ruin The Night Sky For Astronomers?

[@jshepard152]

I don't know about satellites, but street lights have totally killed the night sky.

[@cynthiabauer5763]

The difference between living in a big city and going to a low density area is unbelievable. It's the difference between zero stars, maybe Venus sometimes, and a sky so full of stars you can't even find Venus at a glance anymore.
My cousin moved to a place like that and he said many nights he laid down on the grass with his family just watching the night sky. I'm always very impressed whenever I leave the city. The night sky is unbelievably populated.

[@mastershooter64]

Yea where i live i can see only venus and other 2 stars i can see 3 objects thats it its just stupid

[@my3dviews]

@@mastershooter64 I can only see one star, the sun. LOL

[@GroovyVideo2]

i have a parking lot light blazing in my eyes right now -

[@astroguy5364]

I live somewhere where it's kind of in the middle. I can't see loads of stars, but there's still a good bit visible. I still want to take a trip out west to see everything

[@alfredmorganroth9349]

People say horrible things on social media period ,it's just a sad truth of our time Scott. Great job with your reports, always appreciated.

[@LordFalconsword]

There are millions of internet bullies. It's easy to be a dick when there is zero risk of getting your teeth knocked down your throat.

[@KaiHenningsen]

@@LordFalconsword Actually, knocking someone's teeth down their throat is itself bullying. (And it certainly doesn't work if the physical differences between the participants are the wrong way.) The best way to regulate behavior is still social pressure. Humans are social animals, so this comes very naturally to us.

[@LordFalconsword]

Yes yes, of course. good lord, I was simply making a point of the bullies enjoying their run without consequence.

[@CarFreeSegnitz]

First and foremost anonymity has to be curtailed on commenting platforms. 4chan & 8chan have been the source of truly toxic conversations that humanity would be much better without. Of course if you have concerns for bullying you really need to stay out of anonymous platforms.
What can anyone do about doxing? Even if I stay out of anonymous platforms some bad actor could make my life miserable by doxing me on 4chan.

[@masha_kasha5061]

@@CarFreeSegnitz if you k ow eny thing about this platform is it's not about you it's about the ideas you have and wether they stand the test of reason on there own . Also 1st thing about 4ch is you never post personal information even the pic you post have to have there names changed... people have become overly sensitive saying you idea is stupid or people challenging your beliefs shouldn't be a offense. The internet should stay a free zone where people can say what ever they want whit out consequences....

[@1Andypro]

Another amateur astrophotographer here. Satellite trails in our images are mildly annoying, but less so these days. Any good photograph requires amassing a lot of exposure time divided across many subframes, and the software can now remove satellite trails with rejection algorithms by comparing those pixels to the average pixel value from the other subframes.
There may come a day when we have one or two streaks in every single subframe instead of the one in every 20 subframes we have today, but this won't affect us hobbyists much. Compare that to the light pollution that cannot be filtered out that reduces SNR in every frame: LED lighting is far more problematic since unlike Sodium and Halogen, it covers most of the spectrum. We regulate our radio frequencies nationally because they are a precious resource and it would be a Wild West of conflicting transmitters otherwise, but the same is true of the visible spectrum of light and we haven't fully considered the ramifications yet of how our nighttime lighting affects research, hobbies, and the environment.

[@TK0_23_]

Thanks andyprp. That's a great perspective.

[@stephencourton3328]

They only visible when they still lit by sun, near sunrise and sunset. More than half the night they also in Earths shadow and not visible.

[@Y.M...]

I for one actually look forward to seeing iridium flares and take every opportunity to snap them in my long exposure shots.

[@dadafan5921]

Andypro, its a sad commentary on man but we aren't very good at looking out for other's interests. Sometimes the religious make the mistake of suggesting they do this but even then its primarily only for those of the same religion. Doesn't matter anyway, in five generations there won't be a place to set an earthbound telescope, or anything else: too many people.

[@teddy.d174]

Incredible perspective Andypro, nicely put

[@abptlm123]

Now here's a great excuse for building telescopes on the Moon! :-D

[@trippybruh1592]

No atmosphere either so ya we just need to find a investor.

[@RufftaMan]

2012frawd That‘s not true.
Just because the atmosphere‘s refraction distorts the view towards the horizon doesn‘t mean it acts like a lens when looking up.
Why do you have to come up with stuff like that? Just google it if you‘re not sure.

[@agsystems8220]

​@@2012frawd It's a lens in the same way that really badly made glasses to correct an astigmatism is a lens. It doesn't add to light collection, it just makes a messy image. General purpose cameras based in space don't give a good view of the stars because camera are pretty crap compared to the human eye. The human eye is capable of looking at stuff in direct sunlight, as well as seeing well enough to read based of that same light reflected off our relatively small moon that is darker than asphalt, something like 1 million times less bright. The performance of the human eye is slightly benefited by the atmosphere, because it captures images in the same timescales as the atmospheric 'twinkling', meaning sometimes stars will flicker into view that would not otherwise be visible, but for a telescope taking longer exposures it is pure cancer.

[@valhar2000]

Would it be better? Lunar days last nearly 30 days, which means that it will be daytime for 2 weeks at a time on the moon. It will night for 2 weeks at a time too, which is good for the telescope, but having it be useless for 2 weeks every month may not be the best thing. If it is in orbit around the earth, like Hubble, you have more options.
I would like radio telescopes in space, in the L4 and L5 Lagrange points of the Earth-Sun system, using very long baseline interferometry. That would be, in effect, the largest radio telescope ever made!

[@neutronstar6739]

@@agsystems8220 are

[@phoule76]

ha, great swimming pool analogy

[@hihosh1]

don't agree, it's not like it will affect you like having the swimming hole polluted would. Only a tiny group of people

[@FSLTL]

@Paul Hogsten Make up your mind stupid, is it green screen, CGI or swimming pool?

[@shillseeker9538]

MaVe 64 well it’s a combination genius. The EVAs are filmed underwater but the Earth rotating in the background ain’t in the pool. That’s where the chroma key manipulation comes in to play and the color doesn’t have to be green.

[@ChrisSham]

@@hihosh1 Empathy isn't a numbers game. You avoid harming people in general, whether it's a small group or a large group. If you want a purely selfish reason for that, consider that you personally are a group of only 1; does your minimal number mean the rest of us (even just any pair of people) can always legitimately gang up on you and take whatever we want from you? I think your argument clearly has to be about something other than numbers of people.

[@johndeluca230]

If you've never had the experience, please head to a dark site on a clear, moonless night. My wife and I were traveling in the Arizona desert and pulled into a rest area. The Milky Way looked like a cloud, it was so dense with stars. There were mountains on the horizons, but you couldn't see them. You just clearly saw where their pinnacle ridges were due to the distinct and abrupt edge of the star fields. The sky was so full of stars, it was difficult for me to find even the most common of constellations. It was memorable.

[@frasercain]

Thanks for including me in the video Scott. I sincerely hope that SpaceX is able to take a lead in minimizing the impact these satellites will have on astronomy. That said, if this helps 3 billion people gain affordable access to the internet, I'll remove satellite trails from my photographs without grumbling.

[@spidermain]

Are you going to make a video on the impact of Starlink on astronomy?

[@frasercain]

My video comes out tomorrow. I mention it as a big downside of the constellation, but my take is about the same as Scott's. Astronomers already deal with all kinds of light pollution, including satellite passes through their field of view.

[@masha_kasha5061]

It's not just astronomers who will have a painful coexistence whit this 1000's of new satellites but the company's who launch space vehicle's to. The more trash we send to space the more we will have problems whit navigating. I just hope this companies that want this network's made have some sort of end of life plan for them...

[@spidermain]

@@masha_kasha5061 FCC has REALLY tight regulations for end of life solutions. And each company tried to block each other from launching using space junk as an argument, so don't worry, this issue is being kept in check right now.

[@masha_kasha5061]

@@spidermain As of now it's not a problem but there is going to come a point where this will become a objective problem. Also the FCC isn't the world governing body it only encompasses the US and no other countries are under its jurisdiction. If this satellites become a problem to eny other countries and it prob will at some point China Russia or eny other major actor they will be brought down complicating there life cycle plans. Also who could guarantee that other countries will abide by the same standards as set by the FCC and the US gov.
I'm fully aware this isn't a problem now and that the astronomers at the moment have a better argument but it should be addressed before we end up whit a bunch of trash in space whit no way of dealing whit it .

[@joshuasims5421]

I saw them on Saturday! I was out stargazing pretty far from city lights (arches national park) and saw the whole procession go by. They were about as bright as an medium brightness star, the first we saw were brighter and closer together, followed by several that were spaced far apart and dimmer. It was an incredible sight.

[@RawSpaceVideos]

That sounds incredible.

[@YTANDY100]

@Joshua Sims
i saw them also (in the uk) , i had no idea they were new satellites , i thought it was a big old one burning up or some other space debris :-)

[@maxbootstrap7397]

I've been addicted to astronomy since the 1960s, a huge astronomy fan, and have spent well over 3000 nights at mountaintop observatories in my life. Nonetheless, I have no worries that satellites will ruin astronomy. To be sure, a small amount of effort will need to be spent to eliminate impact from satellites, but not enough to make a big deal about satellites ruining astronomy or the sky.

[@OldestYoungenInGuidePost]

max bootstrap
When I was younger my dad ( tyre fitter ) got me 3 massive tubes and used to sit in them looking at the stars ✨ with binoculars from the top of our garage, when I got some nightvision I see a satellite take a left turn 😳
Then another take a right turn
No one believed it until other people put it on UA-cam,.
Seeing is believing 👍🏼

[@stargazer7644]

That's an interesting opinion. I'm an amateur astrophotographer, and I already have spoiled frames from satellites in almost every image I do. That's about 1/20th of my exposures. What happens when there's 10 times as many satellites in orbit? My camera has a very small imager (and a very narrow field of view). I feel really sorry for the folks with these $15k cameras with really big sensors.

[@maxbootstrap7397]

@@stargazer7644 : There are several ways to look at that. One is that those satellites are part of phenomenon in the sky. Would you throw away a great astrophoto that has an asteroid move through part of the frame? A meteor that moves through some or all the frame? I never did, I thought they were some of my more interesting astropix. And often I was shooting with a 3.25 degree diameter flat field telescope with an optical configuration I invented myself and optical design I created myself. Back in the film days those "artifacts" were just part of the photo, and usually not something that "destroyed" the image. Later with digital sensors up to 8K square and larger features that appeared in one photo but not another photo were candidates for investigation. Flare stars? Variables stars? Meteorites? Asteroids? Satellites? Whatever. In those cases I want something removed that only exists in one of the 2+ exposures of the same part of the sky, I run image processing software to remove the "offending" object. That does mean I need 2+ exposures of every part of the sky, but you know what? That's exactly what I need to discover interesting phenomenon like flare stars, variable stars, meteorites, asteroids ... even some very strange satellites in very odd orbits.
So all in all, I don't mind. Perhaps you don't have software to perform these searches and extractions. But if not, someday you will, and probably not too far in the future they should be common.

[@GlanderBrondurg]

@@stargazer7644 While I am sympathetic to astronomers, this is a consequence of humanity moving into space. I guess that astronomers have been too successful since it was their discoveries that have caused all of this to happen.

[@rogerwilco2]

Radio Astronomy might become impossible in the near future.
Initiatives like this, but also 3G, 4G, 5G, DAB+ and other networks are filling up all radio frequencies.

[@davyaldy76]

Having great space telescopes is all well and good but there is a LOT to be said for seeing something with your own eyes through a scope in your own backyard.

[@my3dviews]

I agree, but satellites aren't much of a problem when viewing things with the naked eye. The problem is when you do a long exposure, which can have one or more satellites pass through the image and cause a streak across it.

[@GoldSrc_]

@@my3dviews A few months ago I was seeing the Orion nebula and saw a satellite pass in front of it, I thought it was pretty cool, but I understand that having hundreds of satellite streaks is bad for astronomical observations.

[@my3dviews]

@@GoldSrc_ It will depend on the satellites altitude, the time of year, time of the night and your location as to whether or not these satellites will affect astronomy.
Much of the night the satellites will be in Earth's shadow so won't be visible. It is only because they are lit by the sun against a dark sky that we can see them.
This time of year, near the Northern Hemisphere's summer solstice, some satellites with a high inclination can be visible almost all night in northern latitudes. Telescopes near the equator will be less affected by this, as most low Earth orbiting satellites will be in darkness for most of the night.

[@SPBurt1]

@@my3dviews Been an amateur astronomer for 30 plus years and I can tell you that it does effect even a visual observing session. A passing satellite through a 1 degree field of view used to be an extremely rare occurrence, not so much these days and a real annoyance.

[@my3dviews]

@@SPBurt1 It's not like there is a satellite passing through a 1 degree field of view every minute. Chances are that you can view a spot in the sky for hours without seeing one pass through. Plus, like I said in a previous comment, it will depend on several factor, such as time of year, time of night and your latitude. In the winter months satellites will only be visible for a short time after sunset and before sunrise.
I don't think that it's much of a problem now, but if they continue to put up satellites in huge numbers like this, then it will become more of a factor at the times that I mentioned.

[@PyroDesu]

8:00
So pretty much the same thing I was saying on the last video. They're not in their final orbits, so their brightness now is not indicative of how bright they'll be in their target orbit and *orientation* (important part emphasized).
9:20
Same experience. People *love* watching satellite passes - especially the old Iridium flares and (naturally) the ISS.

[@warb_of_fire]

There are a lot of things that are cool when they're uncommon but an annoyance when they're common. Honestly I feel like that could apply to nearly anything...
I'm not too into astronomy and am just looking into Starlinks specifically because I'm curious about it. I can imagine I could get pretty into learning about satellites and wanting to see specific ones. But when I want to go outside in the country and just look at constellations, planes and satellites can already be a bit annoying and if there were significantly more it might be a nuisance.

[@PyroDesu]

@Guglis Amonopol Newsflash: Low Earth Orbit requires more satellites to cover than geostationary orbit, but has *much improved bandwidth, ping, and reliability because the signal doesn't have to travel anywhere near as far!*

[@stupidgenius42]

Astronomers: don’t launch more starlink satellites!
SpaceX predicting to launch 25-30 starlink missions: I’ll f***ing do it again!

[@vikkimcdonough6153]

6:11 - Eww, you should throw out that Earth and buy a new one. That one's all mouldy!

[@LSK2K]

Except we're the mold.

[@stev838]

No we fix or die that’s the choice. Old is good new is bad. Or the free tech must be released or we are doomed. That’s all there is to it

[@kataseiko]

I'd love to find an animated version of that one.

[@edwinrobert7192]

Can't you just delete them in the tracking station?

[@SpaceCoffee700]

@@stev838 and war is peace ignorance is intelligence right?

[@stellarpod]

I was wondering about this very issue, impact to observability/photgraphic aspects of astronomy. Your video is timely. I look forward to future segments that continue to flesh out this issue as these networks evolve.
As always, thank you for sharing.
Steve

[@revolutionarycomrade]

I place higher value on the world being more connected than I am some hipster's long exposure shot is ruined by sats

[@stellarpod]

@@revolutionarycomrade, "hipster"??? Hah! I'm 63 years old, son! Astronomers have been fighting a loosing battle for decades (perhaps centuries) where light pollution is concerned. This is just the newest manifestation of the same enemy. Regardless, that doesn't mean there's no room for coexistence. My concern is whether a proper level of dialog is going on regarding this issue BEFORE irretrievable damage is done.
Ironically, concern for the "world being more connected" strikes me as the more hipster-aligned position than does concern for interference with scientific astronomic imagery.
Steve

[@revolutionarycomrade]

@@stellarpod we get more, and more accurate scientific information from sats than earth-based methods, so....

[@KuraIthys]

'hipster' isn't an age dependent term. ;p
But, you know. Otherwise, sure. XD

[@stellarpod]

@@revolutionarycomrade, I know that Hubble has caused the general public to believe that orbital observatories have rendered ground-based facilities obsolete, but nothing could be further from the truth. Orbital observatories currently account for an extremely minor percentage of observational research. They are expensive and observing time is booked for years. Ground-based observatories continue to do the heavy lifting where observational astronomy is concerned. And technology has continued to help mitigate atmospheric concerns. This is why new, larger ground-based observatories continue to be built.
Steve

[@danield679]

Cool Napster T-shirt! I think he used to work for them “back in the day” 😊

[@votpavel]

yeah i was like oh thats an old app i cant remember the name of

[@mario.pastore]

I know that it sounds like a complicate idea, but maybe sharing all the satellites' position could help creating a software that knows exactly how to eliminate the presence of the satellites in astronomical images.

[@supersonictumbleweed]

Well said

[@randomnickify]

It's not necessary, telescopes software does it already, Scott's mentions it.

[@peter4210]

Blue Origin - " We have not launched anything yet"

[@emilartwave]

Jeff who

[@weschilton]

Half the richest man in the world....

[@lmamakos]

The other stupid expensive hobby I have is astrophotography. In pretty much any image I take I certainly get cosmic-ray hits (or other high-energy particle) artifacts in every single image. And to get adequate SNR, I end up taking a bunch of subexposures and stacking them with various rejection algorithms that can exclude artifacts that show up in single images. I also get fairly frequent satellite trails as well to deal with (even with a less than 1 degree square field of view). The low altitude of these spacecraft should result in illumination only near sunrise/sunset times... still, you'll end up with something to deal with in your raw, uncalibrated images.
I'm hoping that we'll see development of new image processing techniques and algorithms that better deal with the specific types of artifacts caused by these satellites. Seems like an opportunity here since the nature of these artifacts are very different than the typical cosmic rays we see. At least these are transient events that, unlike some cosmic ray artifacts, don't leave damage behind on the imager. I've noticed over the years the increase in hot pixels here and there from the high-energy particles that have left a mark behind :-)

[@00BillyTorontoBill]

what stackign software do you use> Regstax i think was the one I used...
now I have a lonely HEQ5 with no OTA. Hard times...plus im in the centre of Toronto. Ugh.
In a year though I may get a place in a very dark place....;-)

[@johnfrancisdoe1563]

Louis Mamakos One key tool would be the orbit data available from the international catalogs of satellites. It may be possible to compute exactly which satellites passed through which pixels by giving the point and angle of observation and a UT timestamp at least 3 to 10 days in the past (to include late reports about satellites with delayed reporting). This may allow filtering out the known photon pollution.

[@gileshabibula7006]

Not only algorithms but sensor improvements will also make astrophotography more feasible, as read noise, shot noise and so on fall with more advanced technology then shorter and shorter subexposures are needed for a given signal to noise ratio. Dithering between subs helps a lot too, probably more than any other single thing.
If your sky background is urban or suburban then sub length at reasonable f ratios is fairly short anyway. Dr Robin Glover has a great video on here about choosing the optimum sub length for a given set of conditions.

[@SherrifOfNottingham]

This actually reminds me of my aircraft photography hobby, where I would take long exposure images of aircraft at the airport at night. The airport has to do what it does and trying to get a 60 second exposure on a plane way out in a parking lot can be a task as you're either going to have to wait until 1:30 AM to get a good shot because all other times there's an aircraft lumbering in front of the parking pads on an almost clockwork 45 second interval.

[@Hirosjimma]

Never knew that cosmic rays affecting the image would be of significance for amateur astrophotographers. I thought that had such a small chance of happening, and with such a small effect, that only pros would have to worry about that. huh, TIL

[@leenux1707]

I liked the iridium flash ... and I know some people who look at the sky and like astronomy because of those flash !

[@JAMESWUERTELE]

Lee Nux we would sit out at our cabin in Colorado at night and see them, I though they were cool.

[@anonymes2884]

The thing is, there were around 95 Iridium satellites. Whereas if all the satellite internet companies reach their full constellations there will potentially be around 16 _thousand_ new "flashes" in the night sky.

[@PyroDesu]

@@anonymes2884 Except the old Iridium satellites only had their flares because of a peculiarity in their design which these new generation satellites have *nothing like.* Not even the new Iridium constellation has flares like the old one.

[@anonymes2884]

@@PyroDesu ​ And yet Musk himself seems to be surprised by the brightness of the Starlink satellites. It's too early to tell of course, they haven't even reached their final orbit yet. My worry is that like any "goldrush", people are rushing in looking for profits without necessarily thinking about it carefully enough (in just 8 years we could potentially _quadruple_ the number of satellites in orbit from around 5,000 to around 20,000+).

[@captainTubes]

@@anonymes2884 precisely

[@MrGeoffHilton]

I've only seen the night sky in all its glory twice in my life and l'm 62 now, I remember both times fondly, I keep promising myself to travel to a dark sky site but never seem to get around to it.

[@IbnBahtuta]

The clutter round the Earth is the nearest we will get to a Dyson swarm in my lifetime. :)

[@justafellowbrother7263]

We might create one within the next 4-5 decades. We already have good reason for doing so, and we're close to having the technology to accomplish it

[@IbnBahtuta]

@jack torrence Quick Jack, Specsavers.

[@tomclark6271]

@jack torrence ... It's a whole herd of cordless vacuum cleaners that swarm down your street making unwanted noise, empting their collected debts in your yard, and breaking into houses to recharge their batteries.

[@ridley68]

Saw the train of them passing over the UK last night. Going out to try to see them again in 1/2 hour.
However as an amateur astronomer I am concerned about this, dealing with planes and satellites in images is a PITA.

[@TheZbadam1]

How do know when they will be passing over?

[@MrNas42]

As always, you always seem to offer the most sensible commentary on this subject.

[@utahnl]

I followed Trevor's guide and i could see them! They were faint at first but became very visible the closer they came to the zenith. I counted about 15 of them, was a bit hard to count because of how much their brightness would fluctuate in a few seconds. Also saw 2 other satelites shortly after that, both moving about perpendicular in path to the starlink satelites, they were quite a bit brighter. Glad i stayed up, it was pretty awesome.

[@TinaLynn]

I LOVE looking up to see things flying around up there. I remember one of the most exciting times in my life was getting out my old telescope and looking at the new space shuttle going by overhead when I was much younger... it's exciting times!

[@brian_kirk]

I work in radio astronomy and this certainly creates an issue for us. The broadcasting and communication from the satellites is radio frequency interference (RFI) in our observations.

[@LikeATreeOnAMountain]

To the far side of the moon with you.

[@Frellnikky]

Aren't there bandwidths that are restricted specifically for the benefit of radio telescope astronomy?

[@brian_kirk]

@@LikeATreeOnAMountain Can't wait :)

[@brian_kirk]

​@@Frellnikky yes there is, however it's hard to enforce protection. The other problem is frequency space is a multi-billion dollar market ... observatories don't have anywhere close to that funding to be able to participate

[@totalermist]

Pfft. Lord Elon said - and I quote - " We need to move telelscopes [SIC!] to orbit anyway. Atmospheric attenuation is terrible.".
So in your case, I guess he'd suggest simply moving your equipment to the far side of the moon. You know, as one does...

[@nathankirse413]

Thank you for bringing this issue to light.

[@user-earthandfire]

I see what you did there.
;)

[@Indy509]

Ded kitty.
Couldent help but feel a reference of Napster from your shirt. Great video. Been watching your stuff since the early kerbal days.

[@alquinn8576]

stunning to learn that twitter is a cesspool--I mean, who would have guessed?

[@samsonguy10k]

UA-cam comments sections aren't known for being rosy themselves. All social media platforms bring out the worst in people because of a perceived sense of unaccountability.

[@KuraIthys]

I honestly think there's more to it than that.
It's also the framework of most platforms - where all communication is done using text.
I'm Autistic which means I have problems with it in face to face situations, but even I'm quite aware that you lose so much in communicating this way.
more than 70% of communication is non-verbal, and something like 15% is conveyed through tone of voice.
Since you can neither see nor hear the person (or people) you are talking to on most social media platforms, you're stuck trying to communicate with 85-90% of the information missing.
The anonymity and lack of accountability are certainly factors, but the nature of communicating primarily through text shouldn't be discounted.
Plus it's largely non-interactive.
I'm writing a huge chunk of text here, and I'm getting no feedback along the way as to whether I'm going overboard with what I'm saying, saying inappropriate things, or anything of the sort.
Any feedback on what I've commented comes well after I've posted it, if at all, and may be equally lengthy and full of incorrect assumptions because I wasn't there while it was being created to provide any kind of realtime response...
So, we've got a combination of anonymity, lack of secondary input, and less than realtime responsiveness, and the whole thing just adds up to a mess.

[@sebsunda]

The answer is: yes, it will add to the light pollution to some extent.
Remember that our long term goal is to make LEO habitable (Although mine would be to make a LEO orbital ring :p)
So expect this issue to get worse over time.
But the good thing, I hope, is that more and more people will be able to experience space.
And that is what we want.
I would gladly give up my pristine night sky if it mean I can go to space & live there if I want to.

[@AltereggoLol1]

Yeah, hopefully we'll be seeing nuclear drives lighting up in orbit on a weekly basis within our lifetimes, heading to the outer planets

[@Vulcano7965]

setting up a satellite network for internet access and actual creating living space in LEO are two things far apart from a technological point of view and in time.

[@Kevin_Street]

I'm totally with you on that imagined future! Hopefully it will come to pass, and sooner than we may think.
As for all these proposed satellite networks, the biggest thing that stands out for me is that none of them are intended to be permanent. For instance, Starlink satellites will apparently be de-orbited and left to burn up after five to seven years, and hopefully all the other proposed networks will have similar limited lifetimes.
If the development of these networks follows the development of similar systems on Earth, there will probably be an initial proliferation followed by a gradual and steady winnowing out process, until we're eventually left with one or maybe two competitors that have the market carved up between them. This will still lead to thousands of little satellites orbiting up there, but it will eventually be far less than the complete free-for-all that seems to developing now.
It'll make astronomy more difficult, but after an initial burst of almost ridiculous proliferation, the number of satellites will settle down into a more steady and limited number dictated by economics. So the difficulty won't keep increasing without limit. And when there's only one or two big providers it may be easier to negotiate things like the "science loss" tax you mentioned with them.

[@ceruleum8853]

i am not sure how you make these good quality videos so often!

[@newsgetsold]

Some of Scott's one-take vlog style updates are simply impressive. There's a reason why he's such a capable physicist, software engineer and UA-camr. 🎓 📚 🤔

[@e_neko]

A dash of Vantablack should solve the problem at least for visible range astronomy.

[@w0ttheh3ll]

on the solar panels? ;)

[@captainfactoid3867]

Not really, it still passes in front of stuff

[@stargazer7644]

At least until the spacecraft melts from the heat. Please think about these things before commenting. There's a reason all spacecraft are white, gold and silver.

[@e_neko]

Star Gazer the black-painted side should face Earth (not too difficult, since the solar panel already has to face the Sun). And in this case, black will be even more efficient at radiating excess heat away (black body radiation is called so for a reason).

[@dongurudebro4579]

I think those high-volume Satellite Operators should pay a little annual compensation fee for those surveys or provide (a few) costless Space teleescopes.

[@leerman22]

Like youtube should pay extra for all the bandwidth they use to expand infrastructure.

[@vladimirdyuzhev]

Good try!
Then pay me too - I used to watch night sky while smoking, and now they ruined the experience for me!

[@patrickbartosz599]

Regarding the iridium network - while it's original intent was to use handhelds, and it still hast he capability to do so, the primary users are commercial vessels (ships and aircraft), basically every single one is on the Iridium network in some way, shape, or form.

[@cogoid]

According to the user guide, even Falcon 9 has Iridium tracker on-board!

[@LaunchPadAstronomy]

I started out on photographic plates as well.

[@TheKlabim]

Scott, what's the traveling of a soyuz to kourou like? What kind of hardware did Esa need to install and when did this become a thing?

[@Markle2k]

They built a launch facility starting in 2005 and the first flight was in October 2011. 21 out of 22 have been a success, with one not reaching the proper orbit, but was sort of fixed.

[@wallonsgliding6917]

As for the transport. I think they do it via boats

[@adampassman]

Is that a Napster T-shirt?! Haven't seen that logo in some time!

[@neilwilson5785]

It's Nintendo. Everything on the Internet is now. It's Napster Nintendo.

[@kencarlile1212]

Really well described, portrayed and argued. Thanks, Scott!

[@floppypancake]

I saw the starlink chain Friday night from Vancouver Island, Canada, just after midnight I think. Looked like 60 little ISS'. The whole chain was about 2 of my hands spread across with outstretched arms , pinky to pinky. Most of them bulked up at front of the chain, with 5-6 trailing behind. Pretty cool to see!

[@Thumbsupurbum]

5:15 Great, we've created the first traffic jam in space.

[@jamesmnguyen]

It's not a traffic jam if they all travel the same speed.

[@theblah12]

@@jamesmnguyen People in traffic jams typically travel at the same speed as well. Or lack of.

[@jamesmnguyen]

@@theblah12 You've seen traffic jams where everyone accelerates at the same time?!

[@theblah12]

@@jamesmnguyen I've seen traffic jams where no one is moving.

[@jamesmnguyen]

@@theblah12 So.........a parking lot? (I'm just joking)

[@Perronster]

Is there any actual way that local governments can stop people connecting to startlink?

[@ksdfjsadjkflksjf]

Just ban the receivers

[@huisbaasbob1923]

They can send a noisy signal overpowering the signal of the sattelites

[@robrod7120]

Weaponised Dyslexia They can ban the receivers, but other than that not much. plus theoretically making your own receivers wouldn’t be impossible. most likely the best way they’ll keep people from connecting is by just making sure they have no clue starlink even exists

[@MrTurboTash]

Same way they stop people growing certain types of plants. Outlaw the equipment and imprison anyone they find doing it. They could probably also signal jam an area. And if they don't care about international treedies, lasers are getting good enough to satelite pop.

[@gedw99]

@@huisbaasbob1923 really ? I know nothing about this. But if it's phased array would they just interfer with on antenna at a time when "jamming it " ?

[@Gkitchens1]

I think the BIGGEST concern should be upgrading systems that track everything in space and making launches cheap enough to be able to go retrieve useless things floating. We’ve got to really start thinking about space junk because launching so many satellites is increasing the chances of dangerous impacts considerably. We need a system for deciding where a craft will be parked in orbit and a system that can accurately track and predict paths better than we currently can. Because the sky is going to eventually become crowded enough that it will become very difficult to track everything and react to sudden issues that might arise. You can’t warn someone/something of an impact if there is so much floating in one spot you can’t see through it all. It’s one thing to see one dim light in the dark. It’s another altogether to pick out one dim light in the dark when there are 3,400 of them all in the same spot.
Fact is, sure s military might not want another country to know where their newest $1 billion spy satellite is but I bet they want it blown up in space by another satellite a lot less.

[@stargazer7644]

I think you underestimate just how big Earth orbit is. Most LEO satellites don't have the ability to change orbit to avoid predicted impacts.
"making launches cheap enough to be able to go retrieve useless things floating" Launches will never be that cheap.

[@Gkitchens1]

@@stargazer7644 never say never my friend. And I was thinking about a future where more things can manuver are in orbit. And I underestimated nothing. We've had plenty of impacts in space already it will only happen with more stuff up there

[@RussianSevereWeatherVideos]

Good thing you brought this up. Ever since I saw that launch I've been worried about our night sky being polluted by those pesky orbiters.

[@basslinedan2]

Balanced views, well put Scott.

[@randommartian249]

İ was thinking about starlink and then you upload this video

[@analogdistortion]

It is crazy to think that it's inevitable that we one day will
be able to see activity in space from the ground with the naked eye. Ships flying around and satellites and whatever doing things up there.

[@DJRonnieG]

As I've gotten into astronomy and astrophotography somewhat recently, I'm at least glad that the "green light" has not been given to advertising satellites. I guess I could live with the occasional uninvited satellite trail during an deep sky exposure if it means good internet service for everyone everywhere.

[@parkershaw8529]

Good for you, my fellow astronomer, I regard myself as a astronomer as well. The entitlement mentality of some other astronomers are mind-boggling.

[@kar351]

So many stuff flying around the planet no wonder aliens always crash!

[@tomast9034]

well who want to meet aliens who can go thru the half of the galaxy in a blink of an eye and cant avoid a satelite:D

[@Henchman1977]

My wife works for Orbcomm!

[@KenLord]

The concern is overblown even for amateur astrophotographers. We take many long exposures and 'stack' them in softwares like DeepSky Stacker ... specifically to remove the noise (anything that changes between exposures), and to improve contrast so the resulting image can be stretched to reveal faint objects. The satellite trails just get subtracted out.

[@ebigunso]

I guess we're still in the region where we can get away with reducing the visibility of satellites, but I feel that in the coming years we can't avoid the sky becoming increasingly cluttered with satellites. The Earth would be less and less optimal for astronomical observations.
Now that said, I hope when that becomes a serious problem we would have big space habitats and space infrastructure already so that the astronomers can simply move their base of operations on to those orbiting bodies.

[@FoFoxhound]

I'm still not convinced by the "We, a private company, will bring the almighty internet to you, for the Greater Good."

[@RasakBlood]

Ofc not. They will do it for the massive profits it can generate. I dont get where you got the "grater good" thing from.

[@FoFoxhound]

@@RasakBlood From the Elon Musk tweet displayed in the video

[@yapanuwan]

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." -Adam Smith

[@niagaradrones]

I see them almost every evening and morning here in Niagara Falls, Canada, and I’m not sure if they are just on an orbital plane that favours me, but they are predictable and beautiful, and the first time I saw the Starlink train, it glistened and inspired.

[@myvids4329]

I think location and low light pollution is key. Some of them were way brighter than the others when I saw them, so I don't think they are in their final orientations or altitude yet

[@peterpalumbo1963]

You are one of the few people in the business I believe in these things. If what you say is true then the STARLINK satellites will not be as much of a problem as I first thought.

[@vinnyb113]

Always good topic and video

[@agesteiro7326]

I realy liked the Napster t-shirt

[@sillyshitt]

Yea' what was that about?

[@leeterthanyou]

@@sillyshitt you young'uns wouldn't remember -- it was an early filesharing application that was focused on music files. Just at the cusp of the fraunhoffer MP3 encoding standard's release. I remember having to wait several hours just to download a single totally-legal Metallica MP3 on a 28.8kbaud dialup connection.

[@agesteiro7326]

Eddie Mercury I remember Napster perfectly. And used Napigator as an help tool to get faster downloads.

[@sillyshitt]

@@leeterthanyou dude, I'm older than You so I remember.
I was wondering why he would wear that t-shirt in a video. It's a bit of a political statement today after all the crackdowns.

[@operator8014]

Someday we'll have mystery philanthropists who launch satellites that shoot down thousands of random satellites as a neighborhood cleanup effort.

[@valhar2000]

Plans for that are already underway, not to destroy satellite you don't like, but to clean up space debris in orbit, since it is a real problem that could get much worse in the future.

[@karsnoordhuis4351]

Im in! When do we start?

[@FoFoxhound]

@ElementHTTP ID For some reasons Japaneses are really into Space debris. Astroscale is a Japanese company

[@HuntingTarg]

@@FoFoxhound
Japan is externally a very 'neat and tidy' culture.

[@terrathelunatic]

Operator 801 you don’t “shoot down” a satellite. You can only shoot down things that are keeping themselves floating or flying by breaking the propulsion systems attached to themselves, causing them to fall. Satellites are already falling. Forever. The only thing that “shooting it down” would do is create even more space debris. Now what could potentially work is if you somehow create a system that would shoot a small thruster into space, attach itself, and then thrust it out of orbit and into the atmosphere. Causing it to burn up.

[@RWBHere]

I was watching Starlink satellite flares at around midnight on 1st June. They're quite visible, even in this city.

[@AstroHuff9990]

I saw these from NC while camping. It was wild!

[@AldenDoble]

No one seems to be talking about the kessler syndrome... I find this to be a far more alarming issue impacting by these satellite fleet proposals...

[@HuntingTarg]

With tens of thousands of objects in orbit, most of them without any orbital correction capability, I don't see how it's not an eventuality.

[@chaswalker2038]

With multiple companies in different countries competing for thousands of interweaved orbits I think the chance of a chain collision event is getting close to inevitable.

[@Maeyanie]

You got a picture of a rocket launching out of your back window? That's impressive. How did it fit through the window?

[@brianhester1996]

Wow! Nice balanced presentation of the salient information and viewpoints. A science-loss "tax" might be hard to calculate, given the variable life of the satellite, but it does seem to be a good start.

[@anonymes2884]

You'd only really need to know the average "loss" per telescope per satellite constellation. It's doable IMO and not a bad idea. Or you just directly tax the businesses by size of constellation.
You do raise another point though, which is to say LEO satellites will be deorbited (and replaced) far more often which means there may be a higher chance of debris landing on populated areas. So compensation schemes might need to be arranged too.

[@lordgarion514]

There's not many options for the private internet satellite problems.
Governments can get together and agree to either decide who gets to do it, force the companies to form another company to work together through (forgot what that's called) and just regulate it(number of satellites allowed and such). It would be no different than why we have local monopolies in electric, water, trash, etc.
Or the third option is to deal with a lot of problems in the long run.

[@vladimirdyuzhev]

I hear incorrect thing about Russia not letting OneWeb over its territory. In fact, Russia just insists that the traffic is routed via NSA-like centers in Russia for NSA-like reasons. OneWeb (and SpaceX) are tentatively agreed AFAIK.

[@serrianarchipelago7582]

That’s essentially a no.

[@vladimirdyuzhev]

@@serrianarchipelago7582 No, this is a conditional yes.

[@serrianarchipelago7582]

Vladimir Dyuzhev Allowing a foreign government to go through your data like that is just what Russia and China want since they desperately want access to American intellectual property. Just look at Huawei.
That sort of demand is essentially a no.

[@vladimirdyuzhev]

@@serrianarchipelago7582 You probably misunderstood. The gov asked for traffic originated in or destinated to Russia forwarded via Russian control centers. Your domestic US traffic is safe)
I.e. Russia-based terminal-sat1-Russia-based control center-sat2-sat3-....

[@serrianarchipelago7582]

Vladimir Dyuzhev Does that not mandate Western IP being channeled through Russian servers? It’s integration on a computer network.

[@ebenwaterman5858]

That looks strangely reminiscent of a Napster tee shirt.?

[@AttilaAsztalos]

Naw, that's Napstronaut...! ;)

[@AlexGarcia-cr5st]

It's all about perspective. Starlink would not only provide internet for the whole world but every time we see the sky we can now understand that the sky is for us to conquer it. We can see it as a piece of art. We can say that those are not stars but man kind's beginning for deep space exploration. Stars are only a portion of the beauty out there in the Universe. Let's go out and see it with our own eyes

[@Zjonaaa]

Good video! as always!

[@TheKlali100]

I completely agree, especially with the fact that the night sky is a shared resource. In the advent of the new (privatized) space race, we often forget that Outer Space is not _terra_ _nullius_ and that decisions like these, possibly affecting us all, should not be made by just one country/legislation.

[@benmol_]

Just a minute... 12000 satellites, having a lifetime of a few years, they will need new ones every month !

[@macjonte]

benmol
40 launches per year each 60 satellite just to replace existing satellites 🛰. (12000/5/60)

[@gedw99]

Assuming 5 year EOL cycle, that's 40 launchers ( 60 satellites per launch ) a year to keep replenishing the system. It's a good point. But of you making 10 to 20 billion a year revenue it's a drop in the ocean.

[@benmol_]

@@macjonte yep : with a 10 years life for each satellite they will need 60 new ones... every 18 days 😂
12000/10/365 ≈ 3.3 => 60/3.3 ≈ 18

[@jesusmora9379]

@@macjonte starlink is supposed to fund starship. starship can carry more than just 60 sats in a single launch, and they expect the comercial cost to go as low as 10 million per launch, and be able to launch regularly due to reusability.

[@xponen]

@@jesusmora9379 rather than throwing more & more miniature 'future thrash' into orbit they should replace all of them with larger satellite with more propellant & capacity, then maintain them with Starship like Space Shuttle did with Hubble Space Telescope.

[@k7iq]

I saw 4 of them marching along Sunday night around 23:54 local here in the Seattle area. Pretty darn cool ! My cell phone was able to see them too until I pressed record anyway.
I guess most of them have been dispersed into their individual orbits by now.

[@arildschonberg3607]

You are bold and I admire you for it. In my opinion; you nailed the purpose of science for the greater good. Even Astro physicists understand that!

[@adriaanb7371]

Do satellites have to be so reflective? If they point their solar panels correctly at the sun, shouldn't it be possible to avoid any reflection to earth? Could they add side panels on the solar panels maybe? 13k + 4k plus god knows how many could make the sky a glittering mess like the Eiffel tower.

[@ke6gwf]

Part of the reflectivity issue is heat abortion. If you make them Vantablack, it will overheat from constant sun exposure.
Some sort of diffusive coating is what's needed, to reduce reflection while dispersing energy.

[@1_2_die2]

Imagine all the dreams would come true and there would be multiple ISS-sized space stations and even bigger O'Neill cylinder structures... and cities on the moon.
The big debates haven't started yet, I say.

[@tempname8263]

O'Neil structures? Not in this millenium.

[@1_2_die2]

@@tempname8263 I know, but to freak the people out... to build the image in their heads.

[@vladimirdyuzhev]

@@1_2_die2 these people will die out before the image could do anything useful. Next millenium, please.

[@javkiller]

I don't know about you but the first thing in my mind when I saw the satellite train was the Hiigaran mothership in orbit over Kharak in the opening from Homeworld. I want that future where we look up to our own mothership in the orbiting scaffold.

[@AltereggoLol1]

I'm down as long as the taidaan don't show up a mission later

[@WillN2Go1]

This is a terrific overview Scott. Thanks. re:The issue of access in places where the government doesn't want it. There is the subscription issue to get password access, but the hardware issue makes me very curious. How difficult would it be to come up with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi DIY receiver? Maybe Starlink and its competitors could offer a few hours of free access to people in those grump-ocracies. The hacker adage of 'information wants to be free' seems a bit reckless, but "Everyone should have the right to be connected" might be a more noble and achievable goal. As for visual pollution of the night sky? I live on a hilltop in Los Angeles, at anytime of the day I can spot an airliner, and at night I can see the stream of planes heading into LAX. It's not as much of an issue as the increase in haze over the past ten years that's blocked the morning stars I used to enjoy when I woke up.

[@zapfanzapfan]

If it breaks the internet walls around certain countries that would be awesome :-)

[@vladimirdyuzhev]

Nah, it wont.

[@IHateGoogle6969]

I don't see any of those anti satellite people complaining about planes, or other satellites that enable them to use a phone to complain on social media with or watch tv.

[@notablegoat]

He says in the video that they reroute planes around the big telescopes. He also explains that the concern is interference in astronomy created by a drastically increased number of satellites in comparison to the current number.

[@IHateGoogle6969]

@@notablegoat My comment was directed towards the hobbyists and amateur photographers who have been saying that they will no longer be able to take photos of the sky because the view will now be 'ruined'. As if everything was perfectly good before. The interference around proper telescopes will be an increased issue, but not one that doesn't already exist.

[@BackyardObservatory]

With their altitudes ranging from 340km to 1,300km, flares and trails are a certainty. When you add in all the competitors, having numerous flares and trails in a short time span in an area the size of the Moon will be common place. So based on reflectivity, orbit altitude, and shear volume of satellites in each company's mesh, the affect on ground based astronomy will be significant. It will reduce the length of exposure time to minimize flares and trails. It will require an increase the number of needed exposures to get ones without trails/flares. It will also limit how dim of an object can be imaged as some objects require numerous very long exposures.
BTW there are numerous deep sky objects that are larger in area than the Moon, Orion Nebula is one of them.

[@NomenNominandum]

My suggestion: For every satellite you put into orbit you have to remove an equivalent of space debris (or pay for its removal).

[@shid007]

Bright blue marble orbited by trash, man there's no beating that ...

[@clayz1]

Humans make trash. This is just the latest paradigm.

[@MrRolnicek]

The last part with you being hopeful that we'll have unimaginably large telescopes one day ...
Have you been watching SFIA?

[@josephkoester3217]

Get a snack and a drink

[@EricTheCat]

Just wanted to mention, you said that imagers would have to make more flat fields but I see no reason that would be true accept in the rare circumstance that someone was using sky flats and happened to catch the satellites. If doing sky flats the sky should be light enough that any affect by satellites should be rare.
Great videos though, I'm a fan and I appreciate all that you do! :)

[@andersonklein3587]

Loved your idea. Fair and efficient. Looking forward to see how it all turns out.
Ideally, I really hope one day we can have very large telescopes on the Moon, I can only imagine the kind of pictures we would be able to take with a big telescope in there.

[@Schocam]

Did the Apollo astronauts take any photos of space ?

[@JoshKaufmanstuff]

Scott: how about a video about Elon's critique of Jeff bezos O'Neill cylinders?

[@revolutionarycomrade]

Elon(gated) Musk(rat) can fuck right off.

[@Montis6]

@@revolutionarycomrade absolutely SEETHING

[@CarFreeSegnitz]

Elon can be wrong sometimes. He got automation wrong at Tesla. He's totally bonkers with Hyperloop. I think even Elon knows he's probably wrong about Hyperloop given how little exposure he has to the idea.
And I think Elon is wrong about near-term Mars colonization.
O'Neill Cylinders have the distinct advantage of being a home-away-from-home but close to Earth, at least at first. There's nothing in physics to forbid an O'Neill cylinder in MEO. No matter how much anyone huffs and puffs Mars is not coming any closer than ~50 million km away.
"...like building the USA in the middle of the Atlantic...". The first spun habitats could be much smaller than a continent. The space station featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey would be an excellent start. Even smaller like Zubrin's bolas spacecraft are definitely feasible with just a single heavy-lift launch.
As to sourcing resources from asteroids... of course this has to happen eventually. Elon's plans for Mars are thoroughly dependent on sourcing raw materials from the Martian surface.

[@ke6gwf]

It does seem kind of resource-wasting to use lots of fuel to transport materials from existing foundations to build an artificial planet, instead of just building on an existing one.
If we had some sort of nuclear engine, or dilithium crystals or something, then it might make sense, but as long as propulsion requires vast amounts of rocket fuel, moving mass is not a good solution.
And yes, rocket fuel can be produced on the moon etc, but that requires vast solar arrays and refining stations to be launched, and the cost just increases exponentially.

[@SuperHighroom]

@@revolutionarycomrade my oh my, aren't you a cheerful one. (POS)

[@Nindjako]

rip space exploration in a couple of years, and internet for that matter, when all that junk starts colliding

[@Nitrorcman189]

Starlink and the future internet satellites will be 550km or lower in altitude. If something goes wrong, the atmospheric drag will bring down the satellite in 1-5 years. Starlink satellites also have an anti-collision system, to help prevent space junk.

[@TheEvilmooseofdoom]

Nonsense.

[@TheEvilmooseofdoom]

@@Nitrorcman189 My comment was addressed to the OP.. Your comment wasn't showing at the time.

[@Nitrorcman189]

@@TheEvilmooseofdoom Crap, my bad. UA-cam's layout is terrible. My bad.

[@coldforgedcowboy]

@Scott Manly just paint the satellites flat black so they don't show up in pictures orr paint them green so they can be green screened out.

[@quoniam426]

Painting them in black will make them burnt by sunrays...

[@gedw99]

The location is well known. So just ppe--screen them out

[@michaelbiggs4313]

It is also important to remember that the United States, Russia, and China are all developing offensive and defensive weapons systems that use satellite swarms. None of them are saying much publicly about the impactors. So nobody really knows the numbers of satellites that would be required.

[@gawayne1374]

I'm sure Martian astronomers will be really excited about Earth's new rings!

[@jacksonthesyndicalist2771]

There won’t be any astronomers on mars if a cascade collision event occurs.

[@gawayne1374]

@@jacksonthesyndicalist2771 it would have to Cascade pretty far and mighty to take down a neighbouring planet!

[@jacksonthesyndicalist2771]

@@gawayne1374 What I'm saying is that that there won't be astronomers on mars if we have too much debris that will prevent us from leaving.

[@Chefmaks]

My biggest fear is that sending that many satelites to space will cause the kessler syndrome to come into action and make space travel impossible for years to come.

[@isaytheenay5961]

If that happens at those altitudes, it will be cleared up at most within a few months. And the vast majority within a few weeks. There's a lot of friction at this altitude, as the atmosphere is much more dense than in higher orbits.

[@alien8treker2]

From a strategic viewpoint, the redundancy of the network provides reasonable assurance of communication in other than ideal circumstances.

[@johnfrancisdoe1563]

Positive Outlook However the redundancy would be much greater if the satellites interoperated, so transmissions can readily zig zag between working satellites in damaged constellations, and transmissions between users of different constellations don't have to detour to some "connection point". Look at the tragedy of the scarce interconnections between geographically overlapping ISPs and phone companies, and make rules to prevent that idiocy. No one likes when Internet connectivity to a bunch of webshops is down because anti-peering policies limited them to the optical fibres owned by their ISP, while users across the street were limited to those of their competing ISP. What is needed is both signal standards for the links and rules to prevent unfortunate economic effects on routing policies.

[@totalermist]

From a pessimistic viewpoint launching these constellations could spell disaster and ultimately be the cause of Kessler Syndrome 😜

[@ivailoi123]

Important question. Since the satellites are flat, can we get a predictable iridium flare effect from StarLink ?

[@ivailoi123]

60 satellites in one orbit will be 360/60 = 6 degree between them. With all of them with their flat side facing perfectly the earth, will we observe "flares". Another posibility will be the big solar array. If it is facing the sun and you are at the top of a hill just before sunset, then the sun will be setting on the west and on the eastern horizon the StarLink will shine right at you.

[@sunkid86]

Girl walks up to me in and asks my name.
Me, shouting: I’m Scott Manley, fly safe!

[@teefkay2]

A VERY large portion of western West Virginia prohibits cell phones. People don’t have them & can’t use them.
‘This is to protect the operation of the Green Bank Radio Observatory.
In order to preserve the operations of that, and all the other radio observatories, these satellites would have to be similarly banned from their fields of view, as well.
OR we accept dramatically degraded radio astronomy.
Those seem to be the only choices.
There are some serious issues with these satellite constellations that have not been thought thru, much less addressed.

[@PapiSmerf]

Yeah, that's a ridiculous antiquated law, should have been done away with a long time ago. With the practical death of landlines cell phones can now be considered the primary means of communication for reaching emergency services, which makes any large scale ban on them a violation of human rights and public safety.
I love astronomy, possibly my favorite focus of science out of all of them, but radio astronomy is just going to have to step up their game and other spectrums are going to have to adapt. Monopolistic telecoms and conglomerates in the U.S. and other countries have created what will ultimately be a long-term crisis in the dissemination of information to the public. There are a lot of other things that need to be fixed, like the frickin' politicians, corrupt officials and bribing lobbyists, but aggressive competitors are going to help loosen the stranglehold so that those changes can actually take place.
There are priorities in society: basic human rights, public safety, and the protection of freedom of speech from corporate interests override the study of astronomic objects thousand and millions of light years away. For the time being. Let us get our shit sorted out, and then we can make pretty pictures and swaths of esoteric data our primary focus.

[@cogoid]

FCC did discuss interference from LEO satellites to the users of geostationary communication satellites, and builders of LEO constellations will be required to make sure to limit that. Seems like interference to the radio telescopes could be addressed in a similar way. I am not sure if FCC has considered it.

[@PapiSmerf]

@@cogoid Does Ajit Pai own stock or private interests in radio telescopes? No? The FCC doesn't care then.

[@cogoid]

@@PapiSmerf Radio quiet zones were always a little shady. Here's what CIA says:
"The possibility of solving this intercept problem with an entirely new technique emerged in 1948, when scientists detected for the first time a man-made signal reflected from the moon. The next few years saw many experiments (generally known as Moon Bounce tests) proving that radar signals so reflected could be reliably detected. The early experiments were monostatic; i.e., the transmitter and receiver were at the same location. Then bistatic experiments were performed, showing that transmitter and receiver could be separated by hundreds of miles on the earth's surface, the only requirement being that the moon be simultaneously in view of both. It now became clear that there was a good possibility of intercepting signals from radar transmitters located deep within the Soviet Union.
The dominant characteristic of signals reflected from the moon is extreme weakness. A typical signal received via Moon Bounce is more than a million billion times weaker than if it were received in an airplane ten miles from the transmitter. Very large receiving antennas are necessary to capture enough energy from this weak signal to bear it and distinguish it from other signals. Most of the very large steerable antennas in the Western world have been put to work on Moon Bounce intercepts. These include the ones at the Grand Bahama tracking station, the 150-foot dishes at the Naval Research Laboratory's Cbesapeake Bay Annex and at Stanford University, and the large dish at Sugar Grove, West Virginia. The 600 foot dish that was planned for the Navy's Sugar Grove facility but never built would have been so used extensively. A 150-foot dish is about the minimum size usable on radars of normal power, so very few are available for our purpose."
[From Intelligence Studies Archive vol 11 no 2, Moon Bounce Elint
APPROVED FOR RELEASE 1994
CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM
2 JULY 96]

[@littlesteve855]

So with more and more stuff floating around, how does that increase the odds of launch vehicles being struck by objects during lift off and re entry?

[@demonorb8634]

Iv seen the star link conga line it looks awesome!

[@Seanmmvi]

This is a long video to simply say "no"...

[@Hans-gb4mv]

not "no" but "we don't know yet"

[@garrettkajmowicz]

If people are really concerned about the night sky, shouldn't they be advocating the elimination of street lights?

[@kingjulien6727]

We are...

[@toadelevator]

IDA has been on that mission since 1988. They don't have as much money as Real estate developers or Elon Musk.

[@Av3rageGamer]

They should also. Both valid issues. Amateur & professional astrophotographers use exposures up to a few hours tracking a single point in the sky to get a good photo of something specific (nebulae / galaxies). Some of the photos are ruined by streaks of light from satellites flying in the field of view. Difficult to remove I hear.

[@randomnickify]

@@kingjulien6727 just move to the village in the middle of nowhere, problem solved. I like my streets bright and safe.

[@dazonic]

No? Go out camping and every sunset has a satellite or two streaming across, it’s a genuine concern

[@toadelevator]

12,000 new satellites , more than 7,000 of which will be 700 miles up; high enough to interfere with a lot of the "night" hours. And that's just Starlink. My astrophotos will look like photos taken through a badly scratched corrector plate if all 12,000 actually get up there.

[@jameshoiby]

Even free astrophoto stacking software can already remove airplane and satellite trails from the sky.

[@ph11p3540]

These new communication satellites will be a huge blessing for far flung arctic communities and those on ships. Currently direct satellite data linking service is hyper expensive. It is still very expensive to take advantage of direct satellite data linking service while out in the middle of the sea or some other remote location. It's part of the reason why cruise ship companies like to charge you a lot for your WiFi to the rest of the internet beyond the ship. It gets even more expensive if you live in a Canadian arctic community where running ground based fiber optic or copper cable is impossible to the rest of Canada. Those arctic communities are dependent on direct satellite data linking for their internet and boy do they ever pay heavy for the speed of dial up speed service.

[@vladimirdyuzhev]

Have you tried not to live in a Canadian arctic community? It helps with lotsa things.