Trails Made by Starlink Satellites • Hacker News Board

Re: Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

#21

Post by miemo » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #15

astro123 wrote: post #4

Here's a statement [1] by one of the largest upcoming surveys, LSST. At least for them, this isn't going to be too much of a problem as, 1) Exposures are fairly short and frequent and so pixels contaminated by these satellites can be easily rejected. 2) There is a huge amount of resources (relative to other projects) going into the image pipeline for this project. I don't actually know in details how much this will a…

It's great that the LSST can survive this, but there's not much point to building it if all the spectroscopy follow up is killed by efforts to put facebook in front of every face in the world. Spectroscopy is the fundament on which modern astronomy is built, and it inherently takes long times even with big mirrors. Getting a satellite in the field of view as you take your spectrum most likely means having to start ov…

pretty snarky to suggest facebook is the only way developing countries would utilise the internet. access to knowledge to better their lives, even turn them into astronomers perhaps

Re: Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

#22

Post by gwern » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

Reelin wrote: post #10

meddlepal wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is No because your local friendly NIMBY will kill such a project for some asinine reason.

> your local friendly NIMBY I think you misspelled "telecom lobby"... https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...

It can be both. 'Baptists and bootleggers'.

Re: Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

#23

Post by garmaine » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #17

garmaine wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, not mentioned, satellite trails are only an issue just around twilight and only near the horizons, both of which are bad seeing conditions for telescopes.

"Just" being several hours, cutting shorter the finite amount of dark time available.

Several hours at increasingly lower inclinations as satellites in LEO reflecting sunlight are low in the sky. Telescopes generally don’t point in that direction because of the amount of atmosphere makes for bad seeing.

Re: Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

#24

Post by clmul » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

miemo wrote: post #21

SiempreViernes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that the LSST can survive this, but there's not much point to building it if all the spectroscopy follow up is killed by efforts to put facebook in front of every face in the world. Spectroscopy is the fundament on which modern astronomy is built, and it inherently takes long times even with big mirrors. Getting a satellite in the field of view as you take your spectrum most likely means having to start ov…

pretty snarky to suggest facebook is the only way developing countries would utilise the internet. access to knowledge to better their lives, even turn them into astronomers perhaps

An argument could be made that the "access to knowledge" does mostly not require the high bandwidths which are being provided as the selling point of the Starlink satellites. Surely most parts of the world already have access to internet via mobile phones, existing communication satellites, or the access could be provided for much lower costs than with Starlink, by creating new infrastructure on the ground.

Re: Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

#25

Post by SiempreViernes » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #18

SiempreViernes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that the LSST can survive this, but there's not much point to building it if all the spectroscopy follow up is killed by efforts to put facebook in front of every face in the world. Spectroscopy is the fundament on which modern astronomy is built, and it inherently takes long times even with big mirrors. Getting a satellite in the field of view as you take your spectrum most likely means having to start ov…

If it can be cheap enough to send 10s of thousands of internet satellites into orbit every 5 years perhaps the same innovation will help drive cheaper space based observance where light pollution, radio pollution, satellite/airplane streaks, and usable darkness aren't a problem.

No, you either do spectra slowly or with large mirrors, no amount of ad spend will change the physical reality.

Re: Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

#26

Post by zamadatix » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #25

zamadatix wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it can be cheap enough to send 10s of thousands of internet satellites into orbit every 5 years perhaps the same innovation will help drive cheaper space based observance where light pollution, radio pollution, satellite/airplane streaks, and usable darkness aren't a problem.

No, you either do spectra slowly or with large mirrors, no amount of ad spend will change the physical reality.

What about space implies fast? Sitting equipment at L2 is all the rage these days and SpaceX has launched there before.

Not that I think this particular case wouldn't work in LEO, just for things that wouldn't there are much better options - we just have historically had trouble getting there affordably/reliably enough to make it worth while.

Re: Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

#27

Post by SiempreViernes » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 11:03 AM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #26

SiempreViernes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you either do spectra slowly or with large mirrors, no amount of ad spend will change the physical reality.

What about space implies fast? Sitting equipment at L2 is all the rage these days and SpaceX has launched there before. Not that I think this particular case wouldn't work in LEO, just for things that wouldn't there are much better options - we just have historically had trouble getting there affordably/reliably enough to make it worth while.

> What about space implies fast?

Oh, sorry, I though you were going to argue that we don't have to put science on hold just to let all the world stream gagnam style via Elon owned infrastructure.

In any case, a single SpaceX heavy costs about the same as 9 2.5 m telescopes, so good luck making the argument that science won't suffer.

If you put a science instrument in space, you do it because it's the only option, not because Elon says so.

Re: Trails Made by Starlink Satellites

#28

Post by zamadatix » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 11:00 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #27

zamadatix wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about space implies fast? Sitting equipment at L2 is all the rage these days and SpaceX has launched there before. Not that I think this particular case wouldn't work in LEO, just for things that wouldn't there are much better options - we just have historically had trouble getting there affordably/reliably enough to make it worth while.

> What about space implies fast? Oh, sorry, I though you were going to argue that we don't have to put science on hold just to let all the world stream gagnam style via Elon owned infrastructure. In any case, a single SpaceX heavy costs about the same as 9 2.5 m telescopes, so good luck making the argument that science won't suffer. If you put a science instrument in space, you do it because it's the only option, not…

Do you actually want to talk about the real world impacts of this or have you already made up your mind? What your saying is going against what the captions on the image from the IAU site point to and seems to have more to do with your personal opinion of Elon than the actual merits of space based astronomy or the impacts of satellites on ground based astronomy.