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"SpaceX, an aerospace company in Hawthorne, California, has already launched more than 650 of a planned 12,000 Starlink satellites. Other operators include the London-based OneWeb, which has launched 74 of what it hopes will be a gigantic fleet of 48,000 satellites, and Amazon, which last month received US government approval to launch 3,236 satellites for its planned Kuiper service." We need to do something about mi…
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…
I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these satellites. However, this conversation has basically been skipped over. Maybe you're right and I'm wrong. The constellations are being launched, and there's zero chance of shutting them down once they're serving a commercial role. Considering the abundant red tape in the modern…
Perhaps in the US, but other countries, even poor ones, manage to do rural internet fine without cluttering the night sky.
I, for one, am not stoked about the implications of an American ISP forcing worldwide coverage for themselves. Their shady business practices and the questionable reliability of the US government make it very hard for me to see many upsides.
Were this to be released only in remote areas and third-world countries, I would agree that there is a large net benefit to Starlink. However, because of the way the system is designed, every country on the planet will now be forced to deal with a solution for the anti-competitive behaviour of the American ISP market.
As long as Starlink is managed by a an American company, I have little faith in their intends and purposes. Being able to intercept or duplicate random internet communications worldwide seems like an NSA wet dream come true to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well, that isn't really a useful distinction in any sense of the word. The American companies are doing it, because they are allowed to do so by their country. Most countries which have any kind of space capability have their own space agencies which say what is or isn't ok to launch. If the American space agencies approve things like Starlink, then the pollution of the Earth's view into space isn't purely on Elon Musk.
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…
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…
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…
As I noted on a similar thread the issue is not removing the streaks, it's what data is lost behind those. If you take a look at this image you'll see that it can be a non-trivial amount of interference in some cases and that data can't just be filled in with "black". https://i.imgur.com/Qdt0N2g.png The interference also causes a "glow" effect on the CCD which corrupts the data well beyond the edges of the main strea…
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…
As I noted on a similar thread the issue is not removing the streaks, it's what data is lost behind those. If you take a look at this image you'll see that it can be a non-trivial amount of interference in some cases and that data can't just be filled in with "black". https://i.imgur.com/Qdt0N2g.png The interference also causes a "glow" effect on the CCD which corrupts the data well beyond the edges of the main strea…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
We can judge the value humanity places on astronomy by looking at how much money is allocated for it. I suspect it will come out less valuable, to humanity, than the service Starlink will provide.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> has to help fund space based telescopes. The telescopes from space can't do what the Earth based can, so the premise is false.
Is that true? What are they missing? I thought Hubble, JWST etc could do basically everything a ground based one could do only better? Excluding radio telescopes which are huge but not effected by satellites anyway.
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…
Is it a difficult problem to solve though in software? On its face it seems trivial, and something that should be part of an astronomer's job description. The cost of not having internet satellites seems to be many orders of magnitude higher than writing software to get around the problem.
Second of all: I highly doubt that this is "trivial", given that observatories are built in the most remote areas of the planet because light pollution was already an enormous problem before these satellites appeared, despite the extra costs that adds to any such project.
