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Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#71

Post by valuearb »

scroogeydop wrote: post #28
Ijumfs wrote: post #5

Who knew that astronomers would be the luddite reactionaries holding science and technology back? They seemed to laugh and cheer every time an astronomical satellite was put into orbit, but frown and shake their fingers when other people wish to utilize space as well. Astronomers don't own space. And by laughing and cavorting, dancing jigs when astronomical satellites are put into orbit but screeching "OH WON'T SOMEB…

It’s really sad that something as universal and beautiful as the night sky is now something to be pissed on. Pretty much a perfect example to demonstrate that “tech people” are amoral assholes. I hope the satellites all burn up.

Starlink isn’t visible in the night sky. It’s satellites are in such low orbits they spend Tye night in the earths shadow, where they are invisible. They are only visible on the horizon at dawn/dusk, where there is actual sunlight to reflect.

Lastly the latest version of Starlink satellites has a shade visor that reduces reflection enough to make them invisible even at dawn/dusk.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#72

Post by valuearb »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #38
thereisnospork wrote: post #21

Parisians hated the Eiffel tower when it went up, claimed it was an eyesore. Give it a few years, and these constellations will be something we look up at with pride and aesthetic appreciation.

It's not about aesthetics, if you keep adding satellites with extremely high density, at some point you run out of gaps in the sky, that are dark enough and unobstructed for long enough time to make any meaningful measurements of the observable universe.

Starlink satellites are only visible on the horizon during dawn/dusk, because they are in the earths shadow the rest of the night.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#73

Post by valuearb »

ra wrote: post #25
thereisnospork wrote: post #21

Parisians hated the Eiffel tower when it went up, claimed it was an eyesore. Give it a few years, and these constellations will be something we look up at with pride and aesthetic appreciation.

There's a big difference between a landmark and polluting the entire planet's night sky with thousands of reflective satellites.

Except they aren’t visible in the night sky. They are in super low orbits, meaning they are in the earths shadow at night, and only have sunlight to reflect during dawn/dusk, when they are usually low in the horizon.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#74

Post by valuearb »

astrophysician wrote: post #13
ckdarby wrote: post #3

Is this really a worry? Won't all the gear eventually be moved off Earth and into space making this argument pointless? I'm guessing amateurs with a telescope in their backyard are the ones suffering?

This is really a worry. * Many experiments and a lot of science cannot be done from space, even if delivery costs were much cheaper. E.g. LSST (0.5 billion in US funding alone, + lots of other funding sources), or wide-field astronomy important for near earth object detection and monitoring (e.g. ASASSN). These things are too complex and too large to realistically do in space. * Ground-based astronomy is inherently c…

Starlink is only visible at dawn/dusk, and mostly low on the horizon. How much serious astronomy is done during these brief periods?

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#75

Post by saas_sam »

rscho wrote: post #65
systemcluster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occupations are always made obsolete when society advances as a whole and better solutions become available. We would not have progress otherwise.

And one day we'll all be obsolete, implying we won't be able to show our value through our work. Brave New World. Ideal for a certain social class: the alphas.

Food, material goods, and services are cheaper and more plentiful than they have ever been in human history. Add to that: jobs are easier to discover, self-teach, and contact than they have ever been in human history. For the poor as well as the rich.

The main thing people get unhappy about is wealth disparity ie., how much MORE the rich have than the poor. That even today's poor have a rectangle that's effectively a magic portal to the entire world's knowledge and population is not satisfying to you when you read headlines about Bezos' mansions, right? Allow me to humbly suggest to you that if the dominant emotion of your worldview is envy, you would not have been any happier in decades past.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#76

Post by alsdkfjkqjwer »

Google234 wrote: post #67
scroogeydop wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to start building tools to jam the spectrum. Make these things useless.

This is very illegal.

they will use k-a for admin traffic and k-u for user data, same as one of the 5G types, which I believe is non-regulated.

So, i guess it is as legal as the interference themselves will cause on your 5g phone reception.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#77

Post by astrophysician »

valuearb wrote: post #74
astrophysician wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a worry. * Many experiments and a lot of science cannot be done from space, even if delivery costs were much cheaper. E.g. LSST (0.5 billion in US funding alone, + lots of other funding sources), or wide-field astronomy important for near earth object detection and monitoring (e.g. ASASSN). These things are too complex and too large to realistically do in space. * Ground-based astronomy is inherently c…

Starlink is only visible at dawn/dusk, and mostly low on the horizon. How much serious astronomy is done during these brief periods?

Still a lot.

* NEO's (asteroids) are really only detectable at twilight so this would severely hamper efforts here, and I hope most people would understand how important NEO detection is from a practical, human-survival standpoint.

* Depending on your latitude/day of the year, "twilight" can constitute the majority of the observable time...

* e.g. for LSST 30% of all images will have a StarLink trail. If Space-X can somehow manage to get their satellites down to 7th mag (15% of their current brightness, 50% of the brightness of their "DarkSat" version), then LSST can mitigate a lot of impact; it will come down to extra cost + observation time for many science cases, however a lot of science cases are still SOL even with these mitigations (precision cosmology, NEO detection, etc.).

The point I'm trying to make isn't that astronomy is "doomed" (though some subfields will be) it's that we should not be in a situation where we are scrambling to fix problems like this (i.e. Space X is now helping mitigate things voluntarily, thank god, and only after a huge outcry). There should be regulations that ensure everyone is on the same page and that prevent issues like this and ensure at least a bare minimum set of requirements are met.

Those regulations are not there only because when these laws were written, nobody even dreamed of a situation like StarLink or Kuiper. I don't think Space X or amazon are "evil" or anything, they're doing great work, but they have zero incentive (except maybe PR) not to trash billions of dollars in astronomy research, and that is neither good nor necessary.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#78

Post by astrophysician »

renewiltord wrote: post #52
astrophysician wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a worry. * Many experiments and a lot of science cannot be done from space, even if delivery costs were much cheaper. E.g. LSST (0.5 billion in US funding alone, + lots of other funding sources), or wide-field astronomy important for near earth object detection and monitoring (e.g. ASASSN). These things are too complex and too large to realistically do in space. * Ground-based astronomy is inherently c…

What do you mean by the "bowled through"? Didn't they go through the FCC (US) who took it to the ITU (UN) and get it all cleared? Looks like the international body in charge permitted it? What does good behaviour look like?

You make a fair point -- I think maybe it is not totally fair to blame the companies here -- they are in a competitive environment and really the best we can expect is for them to follow the letter of the law, which it seems they mostly did. There is a suit against the FCC that argues they incorrectly claimed that their constellation would not have an "environmental impact" (which would have required an environmental impact study) but not sure how well that will hold up in court; it looks like that's best legal avenue we have at the moment to fight this.

The problem is really that there needs to be better oversight and more regulation. The laws as they stand do not address the problems that these constellations produce, because they were written in a time when starlink-like operations were scarcely imaginable. SpaceX and amazon, etc., should definitely be allowed to do cool and serious projects like this, but the oversight agencies basically saying "hey do whatever you want" is a recipe for serious accidents like collisions, as well as a needlessly enormous impact on astronomy research. If there were, say, albedo requirements or something, everyone would have to plan for that, but that is not in place today.

One part that irks me even in the absence of regulation is that SpaceX provided no forewarning of how bright their Starlink satellites would be, which astronomers were shocked by. Space-X claimed they were "surprised" by their brightness which is either a lie or belies serious incompetence.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#79

Post by renewiltord »

astrophysician wrote: post #78
renewiltord wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by the "bowled through"? Didn't they go through the FCC (US) who took it to the ITU (UN) and get it all cleared? Looks like the international body in charge permitted it? What does good behaviour look like?

You make a fair point -- I think maybe it is not totally fair to blame the companies here -- they are in a competitive environment and really the best we can expect is for them to follow the letter of the law, which it seems they mostly did. There is a suit against the FCC that argues they incorrectly claimed that their constellation would not have an "environmental impact" (which would have required an environmental…

Is it a cost thing or a capability thing? i.e. is it possible for Starlink to have what they want without interfering with terrestrial astronomy or are we really choosing one or the other? Quite sympathetic to astronomers if it is cost thing, but undecided (maybe slightly leaning Starlink) if it is capability thing.

Assuming that within 20 years we can have sufficiently cheap space launch systems that there are sufficient geosynchronous telescopes for amateur use would that solve this problem?

Genuine questions, not Socratic method.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#80

Post by CRUDite »

Many people live in such dire conditions and under such stress, the idea of looking up and 'enjoying' the sky will be meaningless. The stars could be a curtain so far as most of humanity is concerned.

We will have to build observatories on the far side of the moon and at lagrange points and in orbit.

Between now and then there is and will be a struggle to get out of the planets gravity well and into space. There will be some detrimental effects, but the benefit of planetary connectivity via sat internet will help so many its hard to put a value on it. If capitalist competition is not desired then there must be a state designated max cap on sat numbers forcing them to iterate on the ground and possibly cooperate.

As someone who has been on the waiting list for an astrophysics scope for some 9 years (!) I can feel the light pollution trauma, though for normal people observing from the ground the albedo of these things will not approach city light pollution.

Disbarring space launches for this reason is similar in the notion to not landing on mars until decades or millenia of sterile robot landers have confirmed or otherwise the presence of life. Reality, waste decades doing this and find you contaminated it anyway with your robot, but it had no effect on life which is robust.

Lets just get out there finally and get stuff done. Most scope viewing is done on cameras anyway now and not by eyeballs.

The world is still a big place. The day you can be connected anywhere and take a vtol to tunguska is still some time distant. The sky of such a world will be congested but there may still be sky slices present.

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