A Powerful New Telescope is About to be Screwed by Elon Musk's Starlink Constellation, Research Sugg

[Judi Lynn]

By George Dvorsky on 14 Mar 2020 at 7:00AM

As astronomers eagerly await the opening of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, anxious operators have run tests to see how well the system might work when low Earth orbit is cluttered with satellite megaconstellations, similar to the one being built by SpaceX. Unsurprisingly, the results were not good.

New research from the Rubin Observatory Project Science Team (PST) shows that a megaconstellation consisting of 42,000 satellites will wreak havoc on the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which is slated to begin late next year and end in 2032.

Nearly one in three LSST images are expected to contain at least one satellite trail, while practically all images taken at dusk or dawn will be marred by at least one satellite trail, according to the research. If nothing is done to mitigate this pending problem, the team expects it will have to add an additional four years of work to the project.

Named in honour of Vera C. Rubin, a pioneer in dark matter research, the observatory should come online late next year. Astronomers will use the Rubin Observatory’s 8.4-metre (27.5-foot) Simonyi Survey Telescope and the 3,200 megapixel LSST Camera to capture 1,000 images each night, surveying nearby stars and galaxies far, far away. The Rubin Observatory, in addition to helping with astronomy and cosmology, could conceivably detect dangerous asteroids approaching Earth.

More:
https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2020/03/a-powerful-new-telescope-is-about-to-be-screwed-by-elon-musks-starlink-constellation-research-suggests/