I’d be more concerned about the light pollution from the city (Perth?) on the horizon.
I'd be more concerned about both. One evil doesn't cancel the other.
An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution
81–90 of 136 posts
Re: An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution
#82Re: An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, you need to take a long exposure. Multiple exposures may improve the quality but isn’t necessary at all.
If the camera is stationary you must stack multiple short exposures to avoid star trails. You can only take long exposures with an equatorial mount.
Not if your “long” exposure is just 10s long, which is enough to get those annoying starlink trails.
Re: An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution
#84I’d be more concerned about the light pollution from the city (Perth?) on the horizon.
Whataboutism.
Re: An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a single 10sec exposure in the Aussie outback on old consumer gear ( Sony a7iii ) https://www.instagram.com/p/CersLuLBfCz You don’t need multiples, and you don’t need an overly long exposure.
It sounds like you know what you're talking about until one realizes the earth is spinning. Wide field photos can be shot up to thirty seconds depending on the back and lens. Anything more zoomy than 50mm uncropped you're getting streaks in Best course of action is to take a video and let a stacking program deal with it, especially if you use a real telescope. Also the Sony a7r have like "150,000 ISO " and iirc cost…
My camera is not an a7r. I paid $1200 for it used.
The exposure was 10 seconds, so by your own explanation, the spinning of the earth is not a problem ( as you can clearly see in the photo I linked )
Re: An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Startup idea: launch anti-satellite satellites to de-orbit other satellites littering your airspace.
There's no concept of airspace in space. You have very few avenues to keep a sat restricted to a geographic region. Orbits like geostationary and molniya exist - but they come with their own limitations for many applications.
The concept of “airspace” is purely a legal one and exits only if your country has an air force able to enforce it (see how Israel has absolute control over Lebanese airspace), any country with anti-sattelite technology could at its disposal could declare that their airspace goes up to the geostationary orbit or even above.
Of course it would complicate the use of satellites a lot, but given their military importance it's likely that this will happen at some point when the tech is ready (by tech I mean a way to stop foreign satellites from operating without causing Kessler syndrome)
Re: An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you know what you're talking about until one realizes the earth is spinning. Wide field photos can be shot up to thirty seconds depending on the back and lens. Anything more zoomy than 50mm uncropped you're getting streaks in Best course of action is to take a video and let a stacking program deal with it, especially if you use a real telescope. Also the Sony a7r have like "150,000 ISO " and iirc cost…
My camera is not an a7r. I paid $1200 for it used. The exposure was 10 seconds, so by your own explanation, the spinning of the earth is not a problem ( as you can clearly see in the photo I linked )
An astronomy photo can commonly require hours or even tens of hours of exposure time.
Re: An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution
#88You know those airplanes with a banner at the beach? I can imagine a constellation of satellites writing ads (live) in space using mirrors and other nifty tech. Unless regulation stops it.
> Unless regulation stops it. Or a ground-based megawatt IR laser with steerable optics.
Somehow, this sounds quite appealing.
I'm waiting for the dystopian SciFi novel now where earth's last survivors blast the escape route through that cloud of satellite rubbish for their Starship (TM), by use of an array of those.
One can always dream.
Re: An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the camera is stationary you must stack multiple short exposures to avoid star trails. You can only take long exposures with an equatorial mount.
Not if your “long” exposure is just 10s long, which is enough to get those annoying starlink trails.
Sure, 10s is certainly long enough to capture Starlink trails, though 10s exposure is not especially long for an astro photo and you would typically want to take longer exposures or stack multiple shorter ones.
For example, my Seestar S50 takes many 10-second photos to form one exposure. I would normally expect to take 1500 10-second exposures or more for a good picture, perhaps over mutiple nights (although this is very different to a wide-field image like this). A Starlink trail would be very visible in any individual frame, often brighter than stars, and I would expect to capture many individual frames containing starlink trails.
Re: An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution
#90"Stitching together 343 distinct photos," I don't doubt that this is a real problem for astronomers and photographers, but I feel like if you had to work that hard, it doesn't really make your case.
In his defense, he was shooting a star trail. @10s per exposure, 6 per minute, becomes 360 per hour.
I believe 30s might be more appropriate for star trails which makes satellite trails oh so much more obvious. But that means a 2-3 hour session of 2 exposures per minute.
I also used to take hundreds of photos in meteor season - and having to diff between meteors and satellites was quite time consuming.