Will Starlink & Other Satellite Networks Ruin The Night Sky For Astronomers?

There's a lot of concern right now about the future of Earth based astronomy with the prospect of thousands more satellites getting in the way of ground based telescopes.
What's the balance between science & culture vs worldwide network accessiblility?

Trevor Mahlman's Starlink video
Here's Trevor's guide on how to find the Starlink train while it's still close together.

[jshepard]

I don't know about satellites, but street lights have totally killed the night sky.

[alfredmorganroth]

People say horrible things on social media period, it's just a sad truth of our time Scott. Great job with your reports, always appreciated.

[Andypro]

Another amateur astrophotographer here. Satellite trails in our images are mildly annoying, but less so these days. Any good photograph requires amassing a lot of exposure time divided across many subframes, and the software can now remove satellite trails with rejection algorithms by comparing those pixels to the average pixel value from the other subframes.


There may come a day when we have one or two streaks in every single subframe instead of the one in every 20 subframes we have today, but this won't affect us hobbyists much. Compare that to the light pollution that cannot be filtered out that reduces SNR in every frame: LED lighting is far more problematic since unlike Sodium and Halogen, it covers most of the spectrum. We regulate our radio frequencies nationally because they are a precious resource and it would be a Wild West of conflicting transmitters otherwise, but the same is true of the visible spectrum of light and we haven't fully considered the ramifications yet of how our nighttime lighting affects research, hobbies, and the environment.

[abptlm]

Now here's a great excuse for building telescopes on the Moon! :-D

[davyaldy]

Having great space telescopes is all well and good but there is a LOT to be said for seeing something with your own eyes through a scope in your own backyard.

[joshuasims]

I saw them on Saturday! I was out stargazing pretty far from city lights (arches national park) and saw the whole procession go by. They were about as bright as an medium brightness star, the first we saw were brighter and closer together, followed by several that were spaced far apart and dimmer. It was an incredible sight.

[johndeluca]

If you've never had the experience, please head to a dark site on a clear, moonless night. My wife and I were traveling in the Arizona desert and pulled into a rest area. The Milky Way looked like a cloud, it was so dense with stars. There were mountains on the horizons, but you couldn't see them. You just clearly saw where their pinnacle ridges were due to the distinct and abrupt edge of the star fields. The sky was so full of stars, it was difficult for me to find even the most common of constellations. It was memorable.

[maxbootstrap]

I've been addicted to astronomy since the 1960s, a huge astronomy fan, and have spent well over 3000 nights at mountaintop observatories in my life. Nonetheless, I have no worries that satellites will ruin astronomy. To be sure, a small amount of effort will need to be spent to eliminate impact from satellites, but not enough to make a big deal about satellites ruining astronomy or the sky.

[PyroDesu]

8:00

So pretty much the same thing I was saying on the last video. They're not in their final orbits, so their brightness now is not indicative of how bright they'll be in their target orbit and *orientation* (important part emphasized).

9:20

Same experience. People *love* watching satellite passes - especially the old Iridium flares and (naturally) the ISS.

[frasercain]

Thanks for including me in the video Scott. I sincerely hope that SpaceX is able to take a lead in minimizing the impact these satellites will have on astronomy. That said, if this helps 3 billion people gain affordable access to the internet, I'll remove satellite trails from my photographs without grumbling.

[vikkimcdonough]

6:11 - Eww, you should throw out that Earth and buy a new one. That one's all mouldy!

[lmamakos]

The other stupid expensive hobby I have is astrophotography. In pretty much any image I take I certainly get cosmic-ray hits (or other high-energy particle) artifacts in every single image. And to get adequate SNR, I end up taking a bunch of subexposures and stacking them with various rejection algorithms that can exclude artifacts that show up in single images. I also get fairly frequent satellite trails as well to deal with (even with a less than 1 degree square field of view). The low altitude of these spacecraft should result in illumination only near sunrise/sunset times... still, you'll end up with something to deal with in your raw, uncalibrated images.


I'm hoping that we'll see development of new image processing techniques and algorithms that better deal with the specific types of artifacts caused by these satellites. Seems like an opportunity here since the nature of these artifacts are very different than the typical cosmic rays we see. At least these are transient events that, unlike some cosmic ray artifacts, don't leave damage behind on the imager. I've noticed over the years the increase in hot pixels here and there from the high-energy particles that have left a mark behind :-)

[stellarpod]

I was wondering about this very issue, impact to observability/photgraphic aspects of astronomy. Your video is timely. I look forward to future segments that continue to flesh out this issue as these networks evolve.


As always, thank you for sharing.


Steve

[brian_kirk]

I work in radio astronomy and this certainly creates an issue for us. The broadcasting and communication from the satellites is radio frequency interference (RFI) in our observations.

[MrNas]

As always, you always seem to offer the most sensible commentary on this subject.

[ridley]

Saw the train of them passing over the UK last night. Going out to try to see them again in 1/2 hour.


However as an amateur astronomer I am concerned about this, dealing with planes and satellites in images is a PITA.

[patrickbartosz]

Regarding the iridium network - while it's original intent was to use handhelds, and it still hast he capability to do so, the primary users are commercial vessels (ships and aircraft), basically every single one is on the Iridium network in some way, shape, or form.

[mario.pastore]

I know that it sounds like a complicate idea, but maybe sharing all the satellites' position could help creating a software that knows exactly how to eliminate the presence of the satellites in astronomical images.

[leenux]

I liked the iridium flash ... and I know some people who look at the sky and like astronomy because of those flash !

[IbnBahtuta]

The clutter round the Earth is the nearest we will get to a Dyson swarm in my lifetime. :)