Will SpaceX's Starlink Satellites Ruin the Night Sky?

Of course, London and New York are not places where you would see hardly any stars or satellites to begin with, but they're just examples of what people at various latitudes will see once Starlink is fully deployed. If you want to generate your own chart for a custom location and time, I have made this program available as a web app here:
You can also download the TLE of the simulated orbital elements if desired, to use in other programs for visualization purposes.

[Astronomy_Live]

For this analysis I used London and New York as example locations in addition to my own location in Florida. Of course the impact will actually be minimal in New York and London as their own light pollution will obscure most stars and satellites anyway, but hopefully this gives you some idea of what the sky will look like from various latitudes and various times of year with 12, 000 Starlink satellites flying around. I can certainly see why so many astronomers are upset, but at the same time the situation isn't catastrophic. Stacking can be used to remove transient streaks as long as there are enough sub-exposures, and they will not be visible throughout the night at all times of the year or from every location on earth. Locations at latitudes closer to the inclination of the satellites will be impacted more than other locations.

[charlieghague]

Astronomy Live! is a man of focus, commitment, and sheer will. I once saw him debunk 3 flat earthers in a bar with a pencil. With a f****ing pencil!

[StarGazerJim]

Could you do an addendum showing the impact from Hawaii and Chili? These locations have some of the biggest and most important telescopes on earth.

[cosmiclettuce]

Thanks for the simulation!


dark satellites (in earth's shadow) are as much of a problem for professional ground-based astronomers as lit-up satellites. The problem doesn't go away just because these sats aren't easily visible to human eyes or astrophoto cameras.

[TodayInSpace]

Loved this video! Thank you for the work you put into the show. Subscribed and looking forward to more.

[Bill-fhqd]

You should also note, that Starlink is not the only mass satellite-constelation that will appear in the near future. OneWeb and Chinese counterparts will also have thousands of satellites in the sky.

[RobertSzasz]

If SpaceX and the survey telescopes work together they should both be able to mask against the satellites, and get super high precision orbital element corrections. And coordination with radio telescopes should allow them to go silent over radio dark zones. The more sats and lower the orbit, the easier it is to create local dark zones, or arrange orientation to minimize brightness for certain observers.

[goldblackbrownwhite]

Another great video! Thanks a ton for all your time and effort.
👍
Subbed quite a while ago and it was absolutely worth it.
Cheers.

[demonorb]

Nice one, I saw the star link conga line a few nights back and it was cool to see a line of satellites.

[Jerre]

Kappa-Sigma-stacking gets rid of 'abnormal pixels' like sat trails, cosmic rays, ...

[sambowen]

I for one welcome our new starlink overlords. ...Haha. but to be fair I dont do much astrophotography right now.

It was pretty cold when I saw just 3 star link flares directly overhead last night (may 28th) would have been cool to see the whole train but there will be more times.

Although, as I understand it Elon and his teams are going to look at ways to mitigate reflection so maybe not the next batch, but I imagine the batch after and subsequent ones will become harder to see, even under ideal circumstances.

[AlexanderGee]

Man I don't like the idea that when I have kids we won't be able to sit and watch the peaceful night sky if it will be that prominent an impact. Then again I think starlink is a great product. But man this is going to be noticable to everyone on the planet, undiscovered tribes will be impacted by this, literally everyone. What gives a company the right to impact so many people in so many counties most of whom have no recourse.

[dazzathecameraman]

Excellent video, very interesting. Thank you Astronomy Live.

[rudirakete]

Thank you for this simulation.that will be a big problen for us in the future.i shared this video in my astrophotography group, i hope its ok for you.thank you for your good work.

[ChristopherVerwey]

Awesome video. Thanks so much for bringing some reality to the argument. It would be great if you could do a follow up video where you look at the size of the satellites in the night sky. On your video each dot looks like it takes up a large portion of the visible sky. In reality each satellite is just a small light dot in the sea of darkness. Unless you're taking a wide angle shot the odds of a satellite ruining your astro photos is fairly small (although Murphy's Law says it will definitely happen). Even with a wide angle shot you already have satellite and meteor trails to deal with. In future you will just have more of them.

[rwest]

Where can I find your software I’d like to try it, and purchase if applicable to my needs.

[Suge]

I can see satellites on any clear night where I'm at and those ones are FAR away compared to what Starlinks will be. Not to mention there will be 45k+ of them buzzing around up there. On a clear night you'll look up and see a moving grid pattern. It will look cool but it will also kind of ruin the beauty of the stars.

[astromansid]

How was the imagery/animation done? I'd like to see what they are like from Adelaide, South Australia

[bryanmcconnahea]

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you very much, subbed. How did you create these simulations, if you don't mind me asking?

[Muonium]

I wonder if black, extremely high efficiency triple or quadruple junction solar cells could be used to cover the underside of the satellite bus (except for the phased array) to not merely absorb light and convert it to heat like black paint would problematically do, but rather to convert it to electrical power that could be used for active cooling internally.