By Krista Lynn Smith of Texas A&M's Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/satellites-night-sky-stars-22397123.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG91c3RvbmNocm9uaWNsZS5jb20vb3Bpbmlvbi9vdXRsb29rL2FydGljbGUvc2F0ZWxsaXRlcy1uaWdodC1za3ktc3RhcnMtMjIzOTcxMjMucGhw&time=MTc4NzMzNTE3MTUzNQ%3D%3D&rid=OTAwMzBiZWUtODdhOS00NzI4LTllOGUtNjg1MmM0MGMzNDRm&sharecount=NQ%3D%3D
38 Comments
There’s a much bigger impact from undirected LED street lights and the prison yard searchlights people put on their houses for “security”
They’ve said this every tens years since the first ones went up.
We need a day every year where we turn off all of the lights for a period of time so that we can really see the stars.
And while 20 years ago it was lucky to spot a Satellite, now we see them constantly.
If that number increases we’ll see more satellites than stars and can say goodbye to earth based astronomy.
But what if I’m invested in ASTS?
Keep the satellites, what has astronomy ever done for us?
I don’t think we have the resources required on this rock to even obscure a fraction of the sky. The real issue is the Kessler syndrome
In ten years, electricity lights will blot out the night sky. Save the night sky now and ban electricity!
Not as long as I have my trusty Daisy BB gun.
Just pay to go to space if you want to see stars /s
Cant see em anyway. Too much pollution
There is bigger fish to fry. We need satellites and the world is shifting toward satellite telecommunication over land based as the long term vision.
LED headlights and other bright lights are a much bigger factor anyway.
Going to need to move all the telescopes to the moon
For long exposure photography, sure. It’s not worth slowing down progress for a niche hobby.
Mirror to full article? The article title is wrong- we will never be able to see satellites in the middle of the night and therefore will always be able to see the full extent of the stars, given low local terrestrial light pollution.
Satellites don’t emit light. They only reflect the sun’s light. Therefore we can never see them in the middle of the night when they are also in Earth’s shadow. Same reason you can only see the ISS for a couple hours before sunrise or a couple hours after sunset. The ISS does pass over your head in the middle of the night, but you can’t see it because it’s not lit. A lot of alarmist articles seem to forget this fact.
Btw, this is a fun read article to check out that is related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare)
ahh reddit comment sections. where everyone has all the answers
> “blot out the stars.”
Absurd hyperbole, especially for someone claiming affiliation with such an institute. Perhaps Krista Lynn Smith would serve her cause better (and not bring discredit to the institute) by avoiding such click-bait verbiage, so easy to counter with minuscule calculation and/or reference.
Currently it’s estimated that 81% of humans live in urban areas with nearly 50% residing in major cities. Most people can’t see the stars anyways. As messed up as it is, if more satellites can make our lives easier or cheaper, then it’s a price to pay.
Also, even with all the launches currently going on, even in 10 years, the stars will still be visible.
We are losing the night
To city light
To satellite
To jets in flight
This is our plight
And why we fight
It isn’t right
Snuffing starlight
Greed is destroying literally everything that is good.
Hahahaha nothing matters anymore who cares at this point. We have no control and are becoming a war torn surveillance world with no water no food no freedoms. No reason to work or try
There’s more money for corporations in blocking out the stars than there is in unfettered stargazing.
it already sucks, every minute or so a starlink sat passes by 🙁
Stars don’t give me GPS or Internet or anything else. I don’t care about seeing some points of light in the sky. Just Google a picture of a star if you care so much.
Just like the rising sea levels, lol The sky is falling.
doubt it. the sky is huge. that is like saying ships could blot out the ocean
Whatever, rural Internet access is worth the extra image processing. It’s not even close.
I’ve had a backyard and a decent view of the night sky for the last two years after about eight years without one. I can sit outside for a few minutes and see half a dozen satellites going by. Thirty years ago I remember seeing one. It was very rare. My point is that this is a real issue.
Yeah, that’s a dramatic idea—but no, not really plausible in a literal sense. Satellites are tiny and very far away. A Starlink satellite is about3 by 2 meters, but orbits 340 miles up. So from the ground, it’s a speck. To literally cover the entire sky with satellites so you couldn’t see stars behind them, you’d need billions, maybe tens of billions, which is just not realistic. Now, what is real is interference with astronomy. Long exposure images can get streaked by satellite trails, and radio telescopes can get interference, but that’s about instrumentation, not your eyes. So you’ll still see the stars.
I think it will only restrict US companies from establishing world wide internet, at some point we will see the same issue when companies in other countries do the same thing
Let’s wait 10 years and then launch a 5 year committee and see what happens. Then launch a 15 year project to fix it. Which will take 25 years and be triple the cost. /s
No they couldn’t, space is big.
Is there a non paywalled version? How does she suggest “saving the sky”?
Future generations are going to judge our current generation harshly, and they’ll be substantially right in doing so.
You can see the satelites only if they are still in the sunlight while you are already/still in the night. This limits this to only short time or small sky region
Didn’t they say exactly the same thing about starlink before they launched? No it is still not possible to see a completely dark satellite against a completely dark sky. Yes it has a slight effect on earth based astronomy. Is it possible to just have a honest discussion about these things?
INSANE article. The author doesn’t understand scale or science. The first paragraph insinuates humans have been on earth for millions of years… This is absolute nonsense.
I actually do astrophotography as a hobby, this isn’t really an issue, there are very good tools out there for removing satellites and other unwanted things from our images. We already have to do alot of image processing, so this isn’t anything new.
For regular astronomy you still probably can’t even see out the tiny satellites unless you are really trying.
A bigger issue is LED streetlamps and light pollution in general. With the older sodium streetlamps you could actually filter them out really easily, but this isn’t possible with LEDs. Sattelites don’t matter when you already cant see the night sky from light pollution. Also there is no way there will be enough starlink sattelites in orbit to meaningfully block the night sky, those things are tiny.