281–290 of 395 posts
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Satellite owners don't own the skies, in the sense astronomers are trying to argue they do.
You're going to have to show me the quote that makes you think astronomers claim to "own" the skies instead of just not having their usage limited and infringed upon.
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This isn't about being able to afford infrastructure. It's about population density in rural areas. North America and Australia (where I'm from) have the exact same issue. No country is going to spend a million bucks to lay fiber to ten person towns in the middle of nowhere.
And yet you used Africa as an example, instead of North America and Australia. Why? EDIT: Wow, you guys are really bad at admitting your own blatantly obvious biases, aren't you?
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And yet you used Africa as an example, instead of North America and Australia. Why? EDIT: Wow, you guys are really bad at admitting your own blatantly obvious biases, aren't you?
I assume because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
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…
Using keps and scrubbing exposures in post is something we could already do decades ago. It’ll just be a new part of the workflow and eventually the space NIMBYs will quiet down.
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I've been there, it's beautiful. Although under ten kilometers from a town of tens of thousands wasn't exactly what I had in mind; I was picturing some of the places I've been in Africa that don't have mobile reception and may well never get it if it means laying fiber. A solar powered base station that relayed mobile internet, even if slow, would make a meaningful difference. The point of my comment isn't to defend…
> I was picturing some of the places I've been in Africa that don't have mobile reception and may well never get it if it means laying fiber. When was the last time that you were in Africa? And in which country, because it's an entire continent. EDIT: So I guess HN doesn't like being called out on https://africasacountry.com/ issues? Well sorry not sorry, but as someone born in Ghana I'm more a little tired of the se…
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…
> 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 companies from one country. Not to mention there will be far fewer non-processed photos. Most people won't care, but it just seems like nothing we see anymore is real.
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…
Remember, astronomy images generally have long exposure times, which already involve tracking the sky, and then averaging out values in the exposure across minutes/hours/days/whatever.
A satellite passing over a point in the sky means that area of sky is affected for only a tiny fraction of the total exposure. As long as you have a database of all satellite locations, you just don't include data from those time slices in the final average. Or if you don't know where satellites are in advance, you just do basic outlier detection -- the kind that already eliminates things like airplanes, birds, the ISS, etc.
Nobody's filling in anything with "black", and the area of satellite interference can be easily expanded to include the "glow" area.
In the end, the quality of the overall image is degraded by a tiny fraction of a percentage, which can be trivially overcome by extending the total exposure time by the same tiny fraction of a percentage.
Ground-based telescopes deal with objects in the sky all the time.
What makes a higher number of satellites any more problematic than those?
The sky is a noisy place. And we've had satellites up for decades. How are "megaconstellations" any different?
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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.
> Is that true? Absolutely. > What are they missing? Everything. Whatever one can do on Earth which requires big optics and maintenance is many millions times more expensive to do in the orbit. And the many million times higher expenses of all astronomical projects in the world are certainly not going to be covered by the operators of the "cheap and small" satellites. Optics, for the purposes we talk about, just does…
Putting it into a 9 meter diameter Starship, possibly in multiple pieces that would be assembled and periodically serviced by crew flights would make it all much easier, cheaper and more performant.
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This isn't about being able to afford infrastructure. It's about population density in rural areas. North America and Australia (where I'm from) have the exact same issue. No country is going to spend a million bucks to lay fiber to ten person towns in the middle of nowhere.
Funny, Canada, even less dense, is doing exactly that. Maybe not 10, but at multiple levels of government there have been up to half the capital without many strings attached to get broadband out to rural areas. My understanding though, it's not work the time even with the fibre there for the larger companies in many cases. This is the latest program https://www.canada.ca/en/radio-television-telecommunications...