
How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images - SiempreViernes
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02480-5
======
verytrivial
The article covers the mitigations already in place and how they only
partially resolve the issue. These satellites are low, bright (at dawn/dusk)
and very soon to be incredibly numerous.

Yes, it is possible for data workflows to post-process these streaks away, but
not all configurations allow this, and whereas previous intrusions were
somewhat rare and could be ignored that simply won't be the case due to three
companies from one country.

This is cost turned into an "externality" and foisted upon astronomers--at
every scale of investment--all over the world. Stock holders in these
companies won't pay for it, but tax payers everywhere will pay for the
mitigations. Not cool. This is a hill I'll die on.

~~~
reitzensteinm
I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote
locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these
satellites.

However, this conversation has basically been skipped over. Maybe you're right
and I'm wrong.

The constellations are being launched, and there's zero chance of shutting
them down once they're serving a commercial role. Considering the abundant red
tape in the modern world, it does seem like it was a little thin on the ground
here.

~~~
q3k
> I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote
> locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these
> satellites.

I've had faster Internet than the average Starlink speedtest says, in rural
Romania, at the foot of a mountain, wild bears and all:
[https://twitter.com/q3k/status/1172621386977861632](https://twitter.com/q3k/status/1172621386977861632)
. Internet access in rural areas is pretty much a solved problem, it just now
hinges on enough of a societal push to apply this solution where needed.

Starlink is yet another SV-style attempt to solve (US) societal problems by
blindly applying technology. Except this time, this also affects other
countries, and we're furious.

~~~
reitzensteinm
I've been there, it's beautiful. Although under ten kilometers from a town of
tens of thousands wasn't exactly what I had in mind; I was picturing some of
the places I've been in Africa that don't have mobile reception and may well
never get it if it means laying fiber. A solar powered base station that
relayed mobile internet, even if slow, would make a meaningful difference.

The point of my comment isn't to defend the satellite launches, quite the
opposite.

It's saying that _even as somebody that would be in favor_ , not carefully
considering the trade offs before giving permission to permanently alter the
night sky is not acceptable. This is exactly the kind of thing that
bureaucracy should make painfully slow.

~~~
vanderZwan
> _I was picturing some of the places I 've been in Africa that don't have
> mobile reception and may well never get it if it means laying fiber._

When was the last time that you were in Africa? And in which country, because
it's an entire continent.

EDIT: So I guess HN doesn't like being called out on
[https://africasacountry.com/](https://africasacountry.com/) issues? Well
sorry not sorry, but as someone born in Ghana I'm more a little tired of the
sentiment on display in the cited part of comment I'm reacting to, which is
the implication that Africa as an entire continent is inherently and forever
will be a place too poor to have proper infrastructure.

~~~
reitzensteinm
This isn't about being able to afford infrastructure. It's about population
density in rural areas.

North America and Australia (where I'm from) have the exact same issue. No
country is going to spend a million bucks to lay fiber to ten person towns in
the middle of nowhere.

~~~
beached_whale
Funny, Canada, even less dense, is doing exactly that. Maybe not 10, but at
multiple levels of government there have been up to half the capital without
many strings attached to get broadband out to rural areas. My understanding
though, it's not work the time even with the fibre there for the larger
companies in many cases. This is the latest program
[https://www.canada.ca/en/radio-television-
telecommunications...](https://www.canada.ca/en/radio-television-
telecommunications/news/2020/08/crtc-broadband-fund-selected-projects.html)

~~~
freeone3000
Sure, and the US had a similar program. Just because the government promised
something doesn't count until the thing is actually delivered.

~~~
throwaway2048
Alberta already has one of the largest fiber networks on earth and has for
more than a decade.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_SuperNet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_SuperNet)

------
modeless
There is so much unwarranted alarmism about this. This is not the end of
astronomy, nor is it even super serious. The "unavoidable impact" they're
talking about is that astronomers will have to care about when and where
satellites will appear, rather than not bothering and just throwing away the
rare image with a satellite in it. A small percentage of their pixels will be
affected by satellite trails and they will need to implement better algorithms
to avoid them, remove them, or use different sensor technologies that can
reject them better.

Sure, if you're an astronomer this is annoying, and will cost you some effort
and money and time. But you'll still be able to do astronomy. Meanwhile, if
you're not an astronomer, the satellites will not be visible to the naked eye
in their final orbits. The entire surface of the Earth will gain low latency
broadband internet access for the first time, and new launch systems will
drastically reduce the cost of access to space, enabling more space-based
astronomy.

~~~
guerrilla
> will cost you some effort and money and time.

This externality needs to be captured for it to be fair.

~~~
modeless
Sure. Governments regulate space pretty closely and they have the ability to
account for that. I'm sure the commercial potential of global broadband
internet is high enough that some funding for astronomers wouldn't be a huge
obstacle to the constellation operators.

------
svara
Living in a city, I didn't understand how big a deal this was until I got a
view of the clear night sky in a less populated area recently. The satellites
are already visible by eye everywhere, and there are only 655 Starlink
satellites. There's approval for 12000, and SpaceX is seeking approval for
30000!

If they're all going to be this reflective, satellites will be the main thing
we see in the night sky a few years from now. Forget about astronomy; 10 years
from now you'd be telling your kids "when I was your age we used to be able to
see constellations of stars in the sky". By eye, only about ~5000 stars are
visible in the night sky.

~~~
modeless
It's not as big a deal as you think. The satellites are only visible to the
naked eye for a few weeks after launch as they travel to their final orbits;
after that they are too dim to see. The sky will not appear different than it
does now to the naked eye; you will never see thousands of satellites. Most of
the bright satellites you see now have been there for many years already;
Starlink will not be visible like those.

~~~
Thlom
Maybe, but with tens of thousands of satellites, each with a life expectancy
of about 3-5 years then Space X will have to re-fill the constellation
constantly.

~~~
modeless
Sure, you'll be able to see the most recent launch, just as you can now. But
you won't see 30,000 in the sky, which is what everyone assumes. Also note
that you can't see them at all in the middle of the night; only for an hour or
so around sunset and sunrise.

~~~
totetsu
Isn't sunrise and sunset the prime time for people looking at the sky for
aesthetic reasons?

~~~
valuearb
People yes, who will enjoy seeing satellites.

Prime astronomy hours are when Starlink is in the earths shadow.

------
RedShift1
This is bad. This is really really bad. The EU has invested billions in
telescopes and that's now going to go to waste. Instead advancing human
knowledge it's just going to fill rich guy pockets even more.

~~~
valuearb
No, it’s not.

Starlink satellites are only visible at dusk and dawn, they are in the earths
shadow during prime viewing hours.

And SoaceX has already added visors to make new Starlink satellites nearly
invisible.

~~~
Balgair
> nearly invisible

In what wavelengths?

~~~
valuearb
In all the best wavelengths first dawn/dusk observations.

------
sleavey
I recently moved out of the city after many years and looked up at night for
the first time in a while and was surprised to see so much stuff moving
around. The first time I saw something I thought I was really lucky to catch
the ISS but after seeing the "ISS" many more times in the following minutes I
quickly realised it was SpaceX and friends' satellites.

I also recall last year looking up and seeing a string of about 20 bright
lights moving quickly across the sky and wondering if it was the start of WW3.
Turns out it was a SpaceX launch.

------
guerrilla
> A negative externality is any difference between the private cost of an
> action or decision to an economic agent and the social cost.

Like pollution, I think this is another perfect example of a negative
externality. A few companies stand to benefit quite a lot by incurring costs
and risks onto others. Maybe these its possible for astronomy and other
endeavours to work around this but it doesn't seem fair that they should have
to be the ones to pay for it. If it isn't possible to work around then I think
we have a bigger problem here.

Personally, I'd like to see these orbits like realestate which are commomly
owned and democratically managed by all of humanity. Then companies could, if
people are willing, temporarily rent them with proceeds equally distributed.
Like in pollution, I don't think market demand for wireless Internet really
suffices as a vote here and we need to make it more explicit to really gather
consent.

Wouldn't it be neat if the net result is that capturing the negative
externality actually funded the launching of better space based telescopes?

------
LatteLazy
I feel like this could be solved with a simple requirement that anyone
launching anything shiny into LEO has to help fund space based telescopes.
They're better anyway and we can have the best of all worlds that way...

~~~
dr_dshiv
Classic capitalism management. If a market change creates negative effects on
society, create a tax to mitigate negative effects

~~~
LatteLazy
Pretty much. Getting the best outcome for the most people etc etc...

------
arthropodSeven
it's hard to make the claim that the private development of space doesn't
inspire people in the same way as the old national projects did. my heart
swells watching a livestream of a satellite being delivered into orbit. but
"memelord space magnate delivers global internet access" doesn't give the
endeavor the gravity it deserves.

space is the last realm of mystery. to me, a glance toward the sky and the
stars has always been the fastest way to feel the presence of God. it won't
lose that for me, even if the daytime sky fills up with blinkenlights. but it
might not provide that for anyone else, anymore, if it stays—forgive me—on
this trajectory.

> _The planets are all long gone. The inkblot finally closes overhead and the
> last star winks out. The gibbous Moon remains shining balefully down on the
> world for a tense and hopeful minute, but then, in an eyeblink, is swallowed
> up by one final event horizon, and spirited away._

> _Left in utter darkness, the former astronomer tries and fails to deal
> rationally with his loss, and his isolation from the human race who, as the
> voice rightly tried to tell him, has really lost nothing._

[https://qntm.org/astronomer](https://qntm.org/astronomer)

------
netram88
What I'm concerned about is how much the launching of tens of thousands (maybe
hundreds of thousands) of satellites will affect our ability to launch things
out of orbit. Launch windows are already very precisely calculated, and the
more junk we put in orbit the harder that will become.

~~~
fock
that's actually a fascinating idea. think about how humanity solves the
environment problems and fusion works out, bringing global peace and
prosperity for once. Now a smallish rock comes from space. We don't see it,
because of "we go to mars, bro"-elon making ground based astronomoy infeasible
and debris from crashes from his great internet satellites making 9/10 new
launches fail. so, even if we saw it, we couldn't launch a nuke to deflect it.
BOOM. There was the USA and Elons android son is just reduced to dust by his
daddies hybris.

~~~
m4rtink
Space based observation of objects on potential collision course with Earth is
far superior to earth observatio. For example you can't really observe
anything coming from the direction of the sun. Look up NEOCam project that
aims to have a near Earth asteroid telescope in solar orbit.

~~~
fock
how many space-based telescopes are there? And how many will where be, once
9/10 launches fail?

~~~
kanox
> And how many will where be, once 9/10 launches fail?

This is not a real thing that will happen.

~~~
fock
This was never meant to be a real thing, but I fantasized. Some people then
told me that our some dozen space telescopes are sooo much better.

How do you know by the way that this will never happen?

------
nikanj
We paid operators huge sums of money to build fiber internet across the US,
but they kept the money instead. Now we're trying with satellites.

The whole astronomy problem could be solved if FCC had teeth and forced us to
get the fiber connections we already paid for

~~~
gpm
Fiber never solves the problem of internet on a ship, or plane, or tank. It
never economically solves the problem of internet in the _middle_ of nowhere.

If the FCC had teeth the US would have internet going up to the "edge" of
nowhere (for some definitions of the boundary), but there are always limits.
Satellites nicely complement that by working best in non-dense areas.

------
jessaustin
Lots of people don't think Starlink is important enough to be barely visible
over the whole earth. Lots of people think it is. I don't care one way or the
other, but I'm glad that the precedent is being set. Someday humanity will
have a reason to put something big into orbit, and at that time those who
favor progress won't want to have to fight the NotInMySky fanatics. As we can
see ITT, they're worse than the New England wind farm opponents.

------
genidoi
In unrelated news the cost of launching a space telescope (that doesn't suffer
from atmospheric perturbations or cloud cover) has decreased by several orders
of magnitude.

~~~
SiempreViernes
> It is this author’s opinion that any correlation between mass and space
> telescope cost is a coincidence.

From "Survey of cost models for space telescopes"

[https://doi.org/10.1117/1.3430603](https://doi.org/10.1117/1.3430603)

~~~
valuearb
A decade old study, using only NASA telescopes, using only super expensive
launch systems.

Now the Falcon Heavy can lift over double the payload mass of the Space
Shuttle to orbit, for less than 1/40th the cost per pound.

~~~
altacc
Launch costs are only a fraction of the cost. The cost of a space telescope
itself is massive, regardless of launch cost. The James Webb telescope is
massively over budget but even it’s original $1 billion cost and 10 year build
time is much more than many ground based observatories would have costed at
the time. Currently it’s cost is about x10 it’s original estimate and 14 years
late, partially because it’ll be on its own once it’s launched.

On the ground, $1 billion or less buys you an extraordinarily large telescope
such as a 40 metre mirror or a distributed array. These are needed to study
very distant objects in detail and impossible to build in space.

~~~
valuearb
True, but if James Webb launched in a fairing as big as Starship, the
unfolding mechanism that’s driven most of it’s delays and cost overruns would
have been far simpler.

And space telescopes don’t suffer from atmospheric distortion, can focus on
the same spots for days straight to collect more light, etc. those are huge
advantages.

------
scoot
Seems like the perfect use case for Vantablack. Of course the satellites will
still block ER as they pass across the sky, but at least if they aren't
reflecting so much light it would surely be of some help?

~~~
lifthrasiir
Painting was already tried and doesn't work.

> But the black paint made the satellite thermally ‘hot’, harming its internet
> operations, said Patricia Cooper, SpaceX’s vice-president of satellite
> government affairs, at a recent webinar.

~~~
dharma1
maybe something like this?
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2241717-infrared-
reflec...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2241717-infrared-reflecting-
paint-can-cool-buildings-even-when-it-is-black/)

Would still be bad for astronomy but at least the impact for naked eye would
be less.

------
lutorm
This was posted in a deep link but I'm reposting it: SpaceX mitigations in
progress: [https://www.spacex.com/updates/starlink-
update-04-28-2020/](https://www.spacex.com/updates/starlink-
update-04-28-2020/)

The OIR report, if you bother to actually read it, also details that a)
astronomers agree that providing world-wide broadband is a worthy cause, and
b) that there is close cooperation between astronomers and at least SpaceX to
work out mitigations.

------
dharma1
ok, so 30k satellites from SpaceX, 60k from OneWeb. I anticipate this is just
the beginning, other US companies and other countries will want to launch
similar amounts.

What will the impact be when there are 500k+ satellites in LEO, who decides
who can launch more?

~~~
rimliu
I hope not many other countries would want to do so, because many have solved
internet problem already.

~~~
sreevisakh
You shouldn't judge other countries by western standards. There are a lot of
places with poor or non-existent internet. But I fear that the reason other
countries will do the same is because of their current infrastructure. Capable
countries would be weary of ceding the control of their internet to American
companies. We already have a splintered internet with countries and companies
addicted to monitoring and controlling information (which would have been
impossible in the first place if it was designed following the original
principles of creating a mesh, rather than a hierarchy). Why would anyone give
up now?

------
Waterluvian
I'm not expressing a pro or con opinion here, but I'm curious. Did this same
conversation happen when we started light polluting the city? Was this why
observatories adapted by moving to darker locations?

On the surface this seems a wee bit absurd, but I wonder if a case could be
made that it's time for more space-based telescopes.

~~~
sreevisakh
That is exactly what happened. It's clear even to the naked eye - people still
freak out when power grids get knocked out at night. They see far more stars
and think that's what caused the failure. To be more technical, the EM
radiation signals that astronomers are interested in is very faint and barely
above the background noise level. This is why they have to use large aperture
and long exposure to essentially amplify the difference between signal and
noise. They can resolve fainter signals (images) if the noise floor (light
pollution) is less.

Compared to space telescopes, ground telescopes were limited by atmospheric
interference. This has improved much lately with adaptive optics. Space
telescopes are better, but it's too costly. You will never see a mega
telescope constellation, because there is no money to be made. Ground
telescopes still generate considerable valuable data (in scientific terms.
corporates wouldn't care any less). Even individuals have ground telescopes
that do this. Some projects like Sloan Digital Sky Survey
([https://www.sdss.org/](https://www.sdss.org/)) puts massive amounts of data
in the public domain. SDSS also does observations that are impossible with
space telescopes.

Space telescopes are good, but are complementary to ground telescopes - not a
replacement. When (some) people say that we should simply forget ground
telescopes in favor of space telescopes, they are actually asking to throw
away cheap, accessible, democratic, inclusive and sometimes unique way of
astronomical observations in favour of an incredibly costly, elitist and
closed methods which is viable only to big corps who have little interest in
it because of lack of short term profits.

An aside, there are some people in this thread asking astronomers to stop
complaining and just remove the streaks from the image. I would say that's
incredibly philistine stance - science has long term benefits that is
underrated compared to commercially motivated projects with perceived short-
term social benefits. An approach suggested is to statistically remove the
streaks from image. That's against the whole purpose of these observations -
astronomers are interested in the details that cannot yet be statistically
predicted. Another approach is to use multiple exposures and combine them.
Again - the signals they are interested in often takes night long exposure
before signal is sufficiently amplified above and noise. This can't be solved
with multiple exposure. The third approach is to close the sensor (usually
CCD) with a shutter when a satellite is in the vicinity. This is more viable.
However, this is going to be hard and is going to waste a lot of exposure
time.

~~~
lutorm
Did you actually read the article? The impacts on research astronomy range
from insignificant to significant depending on the application, and some
things are harder to mitigate for than others. "Removing the streaks from the
image" is exactly one method of mitigation.

------
valuearb
> “There’s no place to hide in the middle of the night from such a satellite
> constellation,” says Tony Tyson, a physicist at the University of
> California, Davis.

Fortunately this has never been true for Starlink, which are at such low
orbits they are always in the earths shadow at night, excepting dusk and dawn.

------
ColanR
Has anyone talked about the possibility of putting our astronomy tools in
orbit? Seems like as it becomes feasible to put megaconstellations in orbit,
it also becomes feasible to put more telescopes in orbit. Wouldn't that solve
the problem?

------
gus_massa
There was a big discussion a month ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926699)

In a comment by vilhelm_s in the previous thread has a link to a site that
explain that the usual software can select correct the parts of the images and
create a nice image [https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/imaging-
foundati...](https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/imaging-foundations-
richard-wright/satellites-begone-how-to-remove-satellite-trails-from-your-
astrophotography/)

------
batt4good
I'm pretty pissed billionaires and their stupid toy internet projects have
ruined my chances of taking a clear picture of the asteroid in my name (won at
an Intel ISEF science & engineering olympiad in high school) for the
foreseeable future :( .

It only transits the earth into a position where the sun lights it up every
three years - I'm still working on finding a university to aim a spectrometer
/ laser at it so I can identify it's mineral composition and decide how much
to charge asteroid miners for it ;)

------
swframe2
Since their internet service will generate a lot of money, maybe spacex should
just provide very low cost launches of future telescopes. Or maybe spacex
should launch their own telescopes in partnership with researchers and sell
the service for a low fee.

I also hope we tax companies that launch and own satellites to fund a clean up
service that de-orbits all the junk before they cause the Kessler syndrome.

~~~
gpm
Part of getting a FCC license for space radios is having a plan to avoid
Kessler syndrome. For things like Starlink that plan is "stick them in low
orbits so they naturally deorbit within a few years in the absolute worst
case".

------
thdrdt
Could a country (or a continent) in theory remove satellites hanging above
their area? What if countries decide to extend the airspace to the aerospace?

~~~
kanox
There is absolutely no way to do this.

These are low-orbit satellites and they will eventually "fly over" every point
on the Earth up to their maximum inclination. Only geo-stationary satellites
are "hanging above an area" and suffer from high latency because of the speed
of light.

Legally speaking "airspace" does not extend beyond the atmosphere. There are
treaties for this, otherwise almost all satellites would need approvals from
almost all governments.

------
ordu
So the next logical step is to move astronomy into space. I mean all the
astronomy, including an amateur astronomy. Elon Musk should launch 100k
telescopes into orbit (somewhat higher than constellations of satellites), so
I could pay $100/year to rent one, to write a program controlling telescope
taking pictures and sending them to me.

------
grawprog
Just star watching in general's become somewhat disappointing. I remember
satellites were nearly as rare as meteors to see and almost as exciting when
you spotted one. Now though, it's hard to even look at the stars without
something moving in sky. Every couple minutes there's satellites.

------
crazygringo
Serious question: how is this any different from airplanes and birds
"photobombing" astronomy images?

Ground-based telescopes deal with objects in the sky _all the time_.

What makes a higher number of satellites any more problematic than those?

The sky is a noisy place. And we've had satellites up for decades. How are
"megaconstellations" any different?

------
scoot
I can periodically see with the naked eye what appear to be "moving stars"
(about the same approximate brightness as an average star), and appearing to
orbit the earth (moving in a "straight" line across the sky).

Can I assume that these are satellites?

~~~
sneak
Yes, especially if they are just after dusk or before dawn. Spotting
satellites is a common thing.

~~~
scoot
Yes, an hour or so after dusk. Guess that's what they are then!

~~~
DavidKarlas
You can even see shape(solar panels) of ISS with naked eye, pretty mind
blowing...

~~~
nsilvestri
No you can't. That's beyond the biological capabilities of the human eye, even
if you have absolutely perfect vision.

------
sfblah
I appreciate the arguments on both sides of this, but it's hard for me to get
past the point that the satellites are temporary infrastructure, whereas
Earth-based fixed wireless or fiber/wire lines are fairly permanent. It's hard
for me to understand why the solution here is the temporary one.

A decade ago I think my opinion would have been different, because technology
didn't make offering gigabit bandwidth via wire/fiber and fixed wireless
pretty straightforward. So, back then you could have argued everything was
temporary. Nowadays, I suspect gigabit fiber/fixed wireless will last a very,
very long time before being outmoded (if it ever is).

So, I'm asking myself whether it isn't just more sensible to put up the fixed
investment to connect remote areas using existing technologies rather than
blasting off satellites again and again to do it.

~~~
lutorm
If you think you can competitively install fiber to all the areas that will be
served by Starlink, then it seems you should be able to outcompete them. No
one's preventing you from giving it a try.

~~~
sfblah
Well I mentioned Fixed Wireless as well. Also, there's room for government in
this. That's like suggesting highways, high-speed rail and airports should all
be privately funded. In most cases, societies have chosen to make those
projects the purview of the government.

~~~
lutorm
I agree, but that doesn't affect the question of competitiveness between
satellite and ground options.

A few thousand satellites sounds like a lot, but the amount of ground
installations that would have to be done to give the same area of access is
staggering.

------
sneak
If only there were some existing available technology designed to make
satellites hard to see or otherwise detect.

Oh well. Too bad nobody’s ever researched that.

[https://youtu.be/ZV6A74qLiec](https://youtu.be/ZV6A74qLiec)

~~~
system2
Best thing to do midnight is watching youtube conspiracy videos.

~~~
sneak
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy to imply that several nations likely have a
significant body of research on stealth satellite technology that could likely
solve the problem at hand.

------
thdrdt
Related: SpaceX tests black satellite to reduce ‘megaconstellation’ threat to
astronomy

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00041-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00041-4)

------
wing-_-nuts
Hopefully they can come up with some sort of 'vanta black' coating for the
sats that reduces this issue. I agree with there needing to be a tax on
bright, private sats in orbit. Space is getting more democratized, but not
nearly so much so that an international body wouldn't be able to slap fines on
companies putting 'disco balls' in orbit.

Another thing is that our skies will probably get brighter overall when we
resort to stratospheric sulfide injection to try to reduce the effects of
global warming. Anyone that doubts this will happen needs to come to grips
with the fact that this is our cheapest most readily available means of
reducing temps until we can get our emissions under control. We're going to
need to fund _a lot_ more space based telescopes to preserve our ability to do
science.

~~~
valuearb
Vanta Black would make the satellites too hot. SpaceX is using visors to solve
the problem .

------
pvaldes
Perhaps putting a camera at the outer side of each satelite and a screen at
the facing-to-earth side transmitting what the camera sees could help. Plus
google advertising benefits, of course.

~~~
gus_massa
The amount of light blocked by the satellite is too small. The problem is that
the satellite reflects a lot of light from the sun.

~~~
pvaldes
Maybe they could use a broken/plicated/spiky surface that does not reflect so
much light. That definitely would reduce the amount of light reflected.

Maybe could be designed to act as a heat exchanger also or be used as a system
to mitigate the improbable impact of a small debris

------
jtlienwis
Maybe it is time to think about moving astronomy to space or possibly the
moon. Issues for years about street light polution. Even ducks show up
sometimes on astronomy photos.

------
ranbumo
How many sats in Leo would you need for it to potentially impact launch
windows and access to space? Does anyone have any data or speculation on this?

------
m3kw9
I feel this is like internet disrupting a lot of things, maybe space
photography needs to also evolve with the new landscape

------
mkj
How long are digital exposures? It seems like most of the interference could
be removed with a bit of signal processing.

~~~
terramex
If you take long exposure of dim object, bright satellite passing in front of
it will saturate signal and there will be nothing to recover. To avoid that
you need to track all the satellites and split one long exposure into multiple
shorter ones - but that multiplies read noise accordingly.

~~~
system2
This is why I take 500+ images and process them. I don't think the moving
satellites would cause any harm to long exposure deep space photography. I
agree if you take 30 pictures, it could be a problem.

~~~
terramex
_> This is why I take 500+ images and process them._

If you do 500 exposures you get 500x read noise of the sensor mixed with
signal. Modern CCD and CMOS sensor have low read noise (compared to thermal
and shot noise) but not zero.

For scientific observations of faint objects long exposure times on order of
hours are necessary, for amateur astrophotography you can just go with
multiple exposures.

~~~
mkj
Thanks for the explanation, I didn't realise there was a per-exposure noise
component.

------
m3kw9
Maybe they can now launch more space telescopes.

------
SiempreViernes
Weirdly, HN itself removed the "how" when I just copy pasted in the title and
I had to edit it back in...

~~~
codetrotter
That’s intentional and I think it’s because most articles on the form “how x
something something y” don’t actually explain how at all. Even when they do
explain how, the title is often just as good without the word how.

------
refresher
Considering the end result, 'Dyson Sphere' would have been a more interesting
name choice than Starlink.

~~~
q3k
Presenting SpaceX “Dyson Sphere but wait fuck that's the wrong celestial body
isn't it oh well let's just roll with it”

------
tom-khagai
I believe it would be difficult to further prevent this from happening since
there is so much more demand for global, low-latency wireless internet than
for astronomical observations.

~~~
DoingIsLearning
> there is so much more demand for global, low-latency wireless internet than
> for astronomical observations.

This is very much not true and a remarkably narrow utilitarian view.

I understand US folks are poorly served in terms of ISP infrastructure and
competition but please don't try to project those issues as a 'global'
problem.

Internet service is a solved problem, you have transoceanic cables and
distribution networks which garantee reliable, high bandwith, _wired_ internet
service.

Wireless service is a solved problem in densely populated areas, again the
issue in the US is the ludicrious pricing of mobile data plans.

The only use-cases that this serves are high-income people that want to go
off-grid but are unwilling to sacrifice high-bandwith, and military
deployments (Which SpaceX does not hide as an objective). To me these are very
poor gains for all the negative impact it brings to science and the 'global'
public.

~~~
tom-khagai
The demand is not limited to americans, most third-world countries will
benefit from having high speed internet unconstrained by local infrastructure
and lack of investment. Having stayed in South East Asia I know the locals
would very much appreciate having more than one option: pay-as-you-go mobile
data bundles.

Even in rural parts of Scandinavia where I spent my vacation, 4G signal was
too weak and ISP's refuse to lay fiber unless the whole neighborhood commits
to subscribe.

This may concern millions of people who need basic or better internet access,
meanwhile there are only a few thousand astronomers in the world.

~~~
DoingIsLearning
The demand that exists is tackled by an increase and expansion of the existing
ISP and public infrastructure.

A satellite based internet provider is inneficiently duplicating the existing
fiber/copper/cellular infrastructure but more importantly cannot scale to
serve the billions of people you mention in your comment.

Do the maths you cannot keep up this alleged 50Mbps link if you add more than
a few million users, there is a finite amount of satellites they can add in
contiguous trajectories.

The capacity issue means this will never be affordable but to a few select few
or state/defense actors.

I agree with your problem statement but this unfortunately is just not the
solution.

------
kome
"SpaceX, an aerospace company in Hawthorne, California, has already launched
more than 650 of a planned 12,000 Starlink satellites. Other operators include
the London-based OneWeb, which has launched 74 of what it hopes will be a
gigantic fleet of 48,000 satellites, and Amazon, which last month received US
government approval to launch 3,236 satellites for its planned Kuiper
service."

We need to do something about millionaires. Urgently. But also global
governance: space is not US's backyard.

~~~
cheph
> We need to do something about millionaires. Urgently.

Can you elaborate what premise this conclusion follows from? And what do you
want to do about them?

And going out on a limb, I would assume you have a problem with the
satellites, but Amazon, SpaceX and OneWeb are companies, not a Millionaires.
So maybe you meant to say we should do something about companies?

~~~
jsiepkes
> I would assume you have a problem with the satellites, but Amazon, SpaceX
> and OneWeb are companies, not a Millionaires.

Elon Musk is CEO of SpaceX and owns > 50% of the shares. As for Blue Origin
(aka Bezos / Amazon); Bezos is the owner of the company. That means these
people can make decisions on their own without consulting anyone else. They
appoint the board, they appoint the CEO, etc.

And sure, there are outside investors. However these investors can only
marginally influence anything because they can not get a majority of share
holder votes (since Bezos, Musk have > 50% shares). Maybe they got a seat on
the board if their investment is large enough. But then what? They still can't
get a majority in the board. Besides the only reason these investors want to
participate is because the whole thing is controlled (and partially
bankrolled) by Musk and Bezos.

~~~
cheph
So are you positing that it would be impossible for a company to make such
decisions if no individual shareholder owned >50% of the shares? If so the
problem is still not with millionaires.

And I'm not sure by what mechanism this will function. What will prevent a
company where no individual shareholder owns >50% of shares from making a
similar choice?

