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Oh God is this the Future?

Captain Scarlet

By Captain Scarlet
in The Astro Lounge

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Nigeyboy

Nigeyboy

Posted
Posted

Just what we need - more LP! Kind of reminds me of the satellite in the Bond film 'Die another Day'. Maybe they have ulterior motives . . . . !!

But seriously - is this the shape of things to come? Soon there won't be a dark sky anywhere on Earth left for us . . . sad times . . .  

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JamesF

JamesF

Posted
Posted

I'm struggling to get my head around the idea that putting something big enough to illuminate that kind of area into space and maintaining it will be cheaper and more environmentally friendly over its lifetime than street lights.  Not to mention the mess if it fell out of orbit.

It would be interesting to estimate how big a collector you'd need to achieve the goal of illuminating an area of, say, 50km diameter to ten times the brightness given by the Moon.  I'm sure it should be possible to get a ballpark figure given the albedo of the Moon and our distance from it, but my brain is too tired at the moment.

And if we all end up in driverless cars by the end of the next decade (yeah, right), what will we need street lights for anyhow?

James

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JamesF

JamesF

Posted
Posted

In reference to the size of the collector, I just looked up the Znamya project as mentioned in the Grauniad piece.  The two versions actually launched appear to have a mirror diameter of about 3.3m per km diameter of illuminated area on the ground.  So for a 50km diameter illuminated area perhaps the collector would need to be around 170m diameter (or nearer 270m for 80km).

And what happens when it is cloudy?

James

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SIDO

SIDO

Posted
Posted

Because of dispersion this will ruin the views for those well beyond China, the list of issues with this are long but to start with cloud and smog will not only interfere with the light hitting the ground but these phenomenon will disperse it variably on any given night making both its brightness at ground level vary and also the area covered or lit broader or narrower as well the light unlike street lighting will cause many areas to remain shaded and dark and in these locations streetlights will still be needed. Biologically many organisms will be affected as bird's that don't fly at night now will as not only the ground will be lit but the sky as well. Animals and insects have evolved by species separately for both day and night hunting, foraging and mating adaptations and this will most assuredly have a negative effect on the biology in and around the areas lit by such a device. There are more negative effects but I'll leave some room for my fellow SGL'ers to explore some of those and close by saying, So much for amateur astronomy in China ?

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baggywrinkle

baggywrinkle

Posted
Posted

I saw this and almost screamed...

I lived 10 years in Shanghai 1998-2008. It was the most light polluted place I have every lived, add to that the atmospheric pollution, you always see a yellow Moon.

Even away from the major cities it is still bad. And now they want to add an artifical Moon.

Chengdu is in Sichuan Province in Central China and outside of the city there are some good areas in the surrounding hills, now they will be ruined.

Though the Chinese love poems about the Moon and the country side of China they do not actualy care for the realiities of nature.

If you think about it you see few if any images taken from any of the optical observatories in China and this from a country that has a rich recorded history of visual astronomy dating back 2000 BCE and one that also published the earliest star charts that still exist today.

 

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Nigeyboy

Nigeyboy

Posted
Posted

Had another thought about this - surely if this thing is going to illuminate a single area, it would need to be place into geostationary orbit? would that not mean the collector surface area would need to be that much bigger?

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Alan White

Alan White

Posted
Posted
14 hours ago, JamesF said:

what will we need street lights for anyhow?

I wonder that even now.
Energy crisis, Global Warming etc. , need to cut emissions, remove all night time street lights and extraneous household external lights.
Big part of problem solved as far less energy production needed for the wasteful lighting that 'really' is not needed.

Then no need for big artificial moon to replace now defunct street lights, win, win all round.

 

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

Posted
Posted
20 minutes ago, StuartJPP said:

Much like everything else reported by The Guardian, pure rubbish.

 

I just heard this horror story on France Inter, the serious French radio channel, so other outlets are running it.

Nightmare.

Olly

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Macavity

Macavity

Posted
Posted
31 minutes ago, StuartJPP said:

Much like everything else reported by The Guardian, pure rubbish.

lol. I think the Daily Mail carries (arguably) better researched science articles, but I think
that many PPE, Eng.Lit etc., (Oxbridge) "Arts" journos don't know nuffin' about science! ?  

I console myself with the idea that much of this seems to be  "Pie in the Sky"... for now. 

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wimvb

wimvb

Posted
Posted

So, maybe in the not so distant future, in stead of having a remote setup in S France / Spain / Namibia /Chile or wherever, we will have remote space telescopes. SkyWatcher in the sky, so to speak, beyond any light pollution.

The idea isn't new:

https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/testbed-paves-way-for-amateur-space-telescope/

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Charic

Charic

Posted
Posted
On 19/10/2018 at 12:37, Macavity said:

I console myself with the idea that much of this seems to be  "Pie in the Sky"... for now. 

That'll need a lot of tin foil, and there's your reflector!

I'm aware of the Norwegians reflecting Sunlight through the use of hill top mirrors to get light down where its needed, but getting something into space for the same reason, that's a big take, but I'm sure it could be done, right or wrong!

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sharkmelley

sharkmelley

Posted
Posted

The latest reports say that this mission will be in an orbit 500km high:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-45910479

This is not much higher than the ISS and means it will cross the sky in a similar time to the ISS i.e. a few minutes.  That means it can illuminate the town of Chengdu for at most a few minutes every 90 minutes. That's assuming they can control the direction of the mirror fast enough.

The mission is clearly a proof of concept.

Mark

 

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