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If only there were some existing available technology designed to make satellites hard to see or otherwise detect. Oh well. Too bad nobody’s ever researched that. https://youtu.be/ZV6A74qLiec
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Will those american billionaires pay say for more European satellites to compensate? What if this were Chinese satellites would you have the same opinion? It would be great if this billionaires would also launch scientific satellites payed from their pocket to compensate, then I would change my mind.
Exactly, if China launched thousands of satellites ruining everyone's astronomy efforts I'm sure there would be an uproar. But US doing it? Fine, business as usual.
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The final orbits are approved in advance by the government; there's no mystery. They are not visible to the naked eye in their final orbits because they are farther away and they maintain an orientation that allows their sunshade to reflect sunlight away from Earth instead of toward it.
There's actually a good primary source for this cited in the article [0], stating: "However, at low elevations near twilight at intermediate latitudes (45°–55°, e.g., much of Europe) hundreds of satellites may be visible at once to naked-eye observers at dark sites." This is referring to Starlink's 12000 satellite constellation, so thousands absolutely is the order of magnitude we're talking about when (if) they go t…
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Why do astronomers own the skies? I don't remember when they got title to that property.
Astronomers don't "own" the skies, the rest of humanity simply considers the benefits of astronomy to be higher than some satellite internet vanity project.
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No. That's not how optics works. The resolution is set by the diffraction limit of the optics, which is mostly limited by the diameter of the aperture. This is not something you can magic away (I am aware that interferometers exist, but those are very limited in their capabilities and don't replace big telescopes). And even with free launches space telescopes are still extremely expensive, since the telescope and all…
This paper suggests otherwise, what are your thoughts? Optical aperture synthesis with electronically connected telescopes https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7852
Interferometry gives you high resolution at the cost of sensitivity. And there way more things that require high sensitivity than high resolution. And I haven't even mentioned spectroscopy, which is hugely important in modern astronomy. And there is no way around having a big light bucket - I wish there was.
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Exactly, if China launched thousands of satellites ruining everyone's astronomy efforts I'm sure there would be an uproar. But US doing it? Fine, business as usual.
The US isn't doing it. Companies are doing it. As stated in the article the company which is currently planning to place satellites at a height likely to have the greatest impact is OneWeb which is a UK company. It is soon to be controlled by the UK government and an Indian conglomerate. The satellites it launches are built by a joint venture which includes Airbus.
I can see it "Trump: China puts 10000 eyes on the sky, they pretend they want to give Internet to the poor but they have cameras and spy on the traffic, and some reliable sources told me they can release viruses from this satellites in a targets back yard, this needs to stop , I will build a space wall and China will pay for it...
The article covers the mitigations already in place and how they only partially resolve the issue. These satellites are low, bright (at dawn/dusk) and very soon to be incredibly numerous. Yes, it is possible for data workflows to post-process these streaks away, but not all configurations allow this, and whereas previous intrusions were somewhat rare and could be ignored that simply won't be the case due to three com…
bit dramatic for a comment on the Internet
I feel like this could be solved with a simple requirement that anyone launching anything shiny into LEO has to help fund space based telescopes. They're better anyway and we can have the best of all worlds that way...
The telescopes from space can't do what the Earth based can, so the premise is false.
I feel like this could be solved with a simple requirement that anyone launching anything shiny into LEO has to help fund space based telescopes. They're better anyway and we can have the best of all worlds that way...
Classic capitalism management. If a market change creates negative effects on society, create a tax to mitigate negative effects