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NNadir

(33,368 posts)
Sun Jul 25, 2021, 11:02 AM Jul 2021

Astronomers push for global debate on giant satellite swarms

This is a news item in Nature: Astronomers push for global debate on giant satellite swarms (Alexandra Witze, Nature, News, July 16, 2021.)

I believe it may be open sourced and not behind a fire wall.

A rather disturbing, and in my ethical purview, obscene picture from the text:



Some excerpts from the text:

Aerospace companies have launched about 2,000 Internet satellites into orbit around Earth over the past 2 years, nearly doubling the number of active satellites. This has sparked concerns among astronomers and other skygazers, who worry about interference with observations of the night sky.

Now, in what would be the biggest international step yet towards addressing these concerns, diplomats at a United Nations forum next month might discuss whether humanity has a right to ‘dark and quiet skies’. The debate could initiate a framework for how scientists and the public would deal with the flood of new satellites — with many more expected.


How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

Tens of thousands of satellites could be added to Earth orbit in the next few years to provide broadband Internet, if companies and governments build and launch all the networks, or ‘megaconstellations’, they have publicly announced. The sheer number of these could mean that hundreds are visible all night long, affecting the sky like never before in human history. “These constellations are changing dramatically the way space has been used,” says Piero Benvenuti, an astronomer at the University of Padua in Italy and a former general secretary of the International Astronomical Union (IAU)...

...Many astronomers were caught by surprise in 2019, when the first batch of Starlink Internet satellites launched by SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, turned out to be brighter than expected in astronomical images. In response to complaints, SpaceX tested several strategies to darken the satellites; it now launches all of its Starlinks with sunshades attached, to make them less visible when sunlight reflects off them. Astronomers and representatives of several companies, including SpaceX, have settled on a brightness threshold for satellites that is slightly fainter than the human eye can see in a dark sky. Starlinks are close to that brightness threshold but do not currently meet it, says Meredith Rawls, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The threshold is a goal and not a requirement. Even if companies adhere to it, the satellites will be visible in telescopes. They are particularly disruptive to telescopes that survey large swathes of the sky. Up to 40% of images to be taken by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a major US telescope that is under construction in Chile, could be marred by satellite streaks near twilight and dawn1. Transmissions from some satellites could also interfere with radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometre Array, a major international observatory being built in South Africa and Australia.


If anyone is familiar with my writings, I never hold back on my contempt for that ethical Lilliputian Elon Musk, who reminds me of characters in that paean to moral indifference, the appallingly dull book by that very dull woman Ayn Rand, in the dry and barely readable novel/treatise Atlas Shrugged.

He just throws his money around to do whatever the fuck he wants at the expense of the rest of humanity and wants to be worshipped for doing so.

I note that the same people who worship the hedonistic errant intellectual homunculus Donald Trump are also prone to worship the dullard narrow minded Ayn Rand.

This kind of disregard for the future of human vision has got to stop.



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Astronomers push for global debate on giant satellite swarms (Original Post) NNadir Jul 2021 OP
Earth is beginning to look like this... paleotn Jul 2021 #1
That pic looks like a traffic jam Bayard Jul 2021 #2
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