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Oh no, 15 tiny lights in the sky. Not really a blight.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the sense that, yes, you can see satellites in space. As a casual stargazer myself, spotting satellites is one of the fun parts of stargazing.
Spotting satellites can be fun, but seeing dozens of them at all times (which is what the article claims) would be rather unpleasant.
On a really dark sky near astronautical twilight, you can already usually see a few satellites in orbit, and some are far brighter.
We're becoming a spacefaring species. That's exciting, and part of it means we'll be able to see more satellites.
It's worth noting that the original tweets grossly exaggerated this problem. I think it's worth trying to minimize albedo of the satellites, but this was a completely predictable result that was obvious from the first minute anyone discussed a large LEO constellation (seeing as we already have satellites). I don't know why it took so long for the astronomy community to actually bring it up. Perhaps because the initially deployed satellites flared a lot in their pre-operational condition, but I'm a little disappointed in how fast a lot of mistruths of this situation traveled around the internet.
There was a similar situation when a Russian private company sent up a satellite that would deploy reflectors to purposefully make it one of the brightest objects in the night sky[1]. I image some astronomers breathed a sigh of relief when the reflectors didn't properly deploy.
In radio astronomy, there are a few small protected bands to keep some portions of the spectrum quiet for scientific purposes. There is no such "spectrum allocation" for optical astronomy. Like chopping down the rain forest or putting plastic in the ocean, we may improve our quality of life through external costs. Governmental regulation permits us to partially control for these externalities. Perhaps if we find ourselves in a big mess like with CFC's and destroying the ozone layer, we will have a public call-to-action to create regulations.
So, what's the rub? Ground based telescopes are vastly cheaper than space-based alternatives for optical and radio astronomy. The difference in cost is often more than two orders of magnitude. If ground based telescopes become less efficient or less productive, there will simply be fewer scientific discoveries made within a flat budget. If the public is required to increase the budgets of NASA, NSF, ESO, and ESA to maintain their desired level of scientific output, then that in itself is an external cost that SpaceX and other companies are passing on.
Is it worth protecting ground based astronomy here though? Obviously the science is immensely important, but so is the internet, I dont buy this idea about the lack of consensus being an issue. Certainly the scientists should have had their say, and perhaps this should have been put up for a more public debate before the project was initiated, but I don't think that the go ahead to the project should be contingent on…
Possibly unpopular opinion: no, I don't think it's worth protecting ground-based astronomy. I could be wrong, but the majority of the important visual/IR astronomical observations from the last decade seem have come from space-based instruments, not ground-based ones. We need to put more instruments in orbit, not worry about fundamentally limited ones on the ground. Additionally, this seems to me like an overall posi…
It will have 144 times the light-collecting area of Hubble. Nice graphic comparing the new generation of extremely large telescopes here: [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Meter_Telescope
[1] https://en.es-static.us/upl/2018/04/comparison-telescope-mir...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the sense that, yes, you can see satellites in space. As a casual stargazer myself, spotting satellites is one of the fun parts of stargazing.
Spotting satellites can be fun, but seeing dozens of them at all times (which is what the article claims) would be rather unpleasant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
after their shelf life SpaceX will send more up. That's our night sky ruined as long as SpaceX exists and any competitors.
That's not accurate unless you think the current satellites (many of which are far brighter, such as ISS and Iridium flares) already "ruin" the night sky. I watched a recent pass of the Starlink satellites, and now that they're oriented near their operational directions, I could barely see them. I only noticed them because I knew right where to look. Unlike the flashing lights of passing aircraft which were a lot mor…
SpaceX satellites are much closer and they are planning something around 7,500 of them.
Might not be too hard to look in just the right place with that many floating around.
Not too worried about it. They have a shelf life and I imagine their design will improve over time. I'd rather see some regulations against all the lights in the Walmart/shopping mall/grocery store parking lots which have completely ruined the night sky in my area.
It's also a global problem.
Is it worth protecting ground based astronomy here though? Obviously the science is immensely important, but so is the internet, I dont buy this idea about the lack of consensus being an issue. Certainly the scientists should have had their say, and perhaps this should have been put up for a more public debate before the project was initiated, but I don't think that the go ahead to the project should be contingent on…
The importance society places on something can be judged by how much money it's willing to spend on it. The NSF budget for astronomy is $250M/year. Revenue projections for Starlink reach as high as $50B/year.
