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Soon swamped in satellites


gorann

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14 minutes ago, Cyril said:

Heard day talk of people having a new disease, video game playing.

It will literally change  the way the planet develops? Zombie Apocalypse!!!!

And more and more children being exposed to the cancer that is social media.

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The BAA forum has an interesting entry on this......

Wonder if you could help me please? On Friday night (24th May) at a out 11.30pm 2 of my friends and I watched a very strange phenomenon for a good minute, from a country lane just north of Totnes in Devon. (We were sober.)  We were admiring a very starry night sky, when we noticed what looked like a horizontal band of stars moving in unison from west to east across the sky. They didn't fade away but steadily moved, with stars at the 'front' end more closely spaced together than those at the back, which seemed to lag. It was completely silent. There were no flashing or coloured lights to suggest it was a plane. Really odd. It almost looked like a train was gliding along up there , with lights showing from its windows . I'm guessing this was an illusion caused by something, but would be grateful if you can explain as it has mystified us! Many thanks.

 

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And now the damn things are flaring...

https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2019/05/29/starlink-satellite-flares/

My local skies are bad enough without 12000 of that nice Mr. Musk's satellites lighting up the night like a fireworks display.

Time to give up this hobby, I think.  Still, at least Mr. Musk will make lots of money from our loss...

At least the next Carrington event will be some sort of karma.

 

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1 hour ago, Hallingskies said:

And now the damn things are flaring...

https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2019/05/29/starlink-satellite-flares/

My local skies are bad enough without 12000 of that nice Mr. Musk's satellites lighting up the night like a fireworks display.

Time to give up this hobby, I think.  Still, at least Mr. Musk will make lots of money from our loss...

At least the next Carrington event will be some sort of karma.

 

Don't forget the 3200 that Amazon are planning on putting up as well. It's going to be hard finding a gap in the sky to see anything. Lol.

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Quote

The whole brightness issue is something SpaceX is considering, Musk continued. The exec “sent a note to Starlink team last week specifically regarding albedo reduction,” he tweeted. “We’ll get a better sense of value of this when satellites have raised orbits & arrays are tracking to sun.”

It sounds like we won't know the true impact for some time yet - and at least they are actively looking at changing materials to reduce reflections.

Im probably coming across as a bit of a fan boy / devils advocate but there have been plenty of times when huge changes have had to happen despite uproar and we have been better off for it. Like all those electricity pylons cluttering up the countryside, or the copper phone lines on every street. Or a satellite dish for every home.

Im 99.99999% sure that astrophotographers will find a way around this - relatively easily. Can it be that much worse than this?

planes.thumb.png.7eb4a55d2a2e8b2620e70abdb80732da.png

Edited by upahill
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5 hours ago, upahill said:

It sounds like we won't know the true impact for some time yet - and at least they are actively looking at changing materials to reduce reflections.

 

Bit like fossil fuels, CFC's plastics, and now we are told "bad"

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So the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has so far approved Elon Musk´s operation of more than 7,000 SpaceX satellites in low Earth orbit. How can an agency in charge of 9.8 million km2 (the area of the US) approve something affecting the whole 510 million km2 of the Earth? My calculator tells me that the US only makes up 2% of the earth surface (and could maybe claim the same fraction of the space above it).

Edited by gorann
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If we start discussing what US administration is allowing itself to do, that will lead us into politics and I reckon it is a no - no on this forum, so best steer clear away from such discussion.

However, legal things should not be out of bounds and we should be consulting various space treaties to asses what is legal and what not. Maybe petition to a proper address if we find a violation of a certain treaty would help? I won't hold my breath however ...

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7 hours ago, upahill said:

It sounds like we won't know the true impact for some time yet - and at least they are actively looking at changing materials to reduce reflections.

Im probably coming across as a bit of a fan boy / devils advocate but there have been plenty of times when huge changes have had to happen despite uproar and we have been better off for it. Like all those electricity pylons cluttering up the countryside, or the copper phone lines on every street. Or a satellite dish for every home.

Im 99.99999% sure that astrophotographers will find a way around this - relatively easily. Can it be that much worse than this?

planes.thumb.png.7eb4a55d2a2e8b2620e70abdb80732da.png

I have not seen a single plane at night reflecting the Sunlight  ¿?

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12 minutes ago, Rainer said:

I have not seen a single plane at night reflecting the Sunlight  ¿?

The plane reflection is from ground lights. The show up all the time with Night Vision eyepieces. Birds, planes, satellites, just about everything reflective. I’m not imaging with my intensifiers though. Just visual.

 

more concerned about the larger picture here. Space X is the first, but what happens when other countries or even communication companies competing start launching their own thousands of satellites?

I don’t think this has been thought through enough on potential negative impact in all areas. Only the positive impact and cash cow considered as majority of thought. Lots of people mentioning that there are great ideas for space debris cleanup, but no one wants to donate for the unprofitable cleanup tasks.

I would rather have seen a working model for cleanup launched first and proven, then I’m guessing a lot more support for this venture by the public.

I know it’s a lot more than bringing memes and cat videos to the masses, but really, are devices to utilize the new high speed internet infrastructure going to be passed out for lower income communities also? 

We’ve seen what good intentions in lowering packaging and material costs has brought us and the landfills and sunken sites full of toxic material with half lives of thousands of years for the sake of bringing lower cost energy to the masses.

Plastic storms and islands of garbage three times the size of France.

What could possibly go wrong?

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19 minutes ago, Rainer said:

I have not seen a single plane at night reflecting the Sunlight  ¿?

Yes, but I have seen plenty of them having navigation lights turned on :D, something very apparent during the night.

However, I do agree that above image is very misleading.

We can do a simple calculation. Most airliners fly at about 24000-30000ft, so let's take that average height to any given airplane is about 8km. Let's further assume that below 10 degrees those don't represent a "threat" to astronomical observations.

This means that any given airplane flying at average height of 8km will be potential problem for anyone standing inside circle of about 45km. Or rather "circle of problem" of any given airliner will be ~6351km2. Let's also suppose that there are 10000 airplanes on average in the air at any given time anywhere on the earth. Surface of the earth is ~510 million km2.

Europe land surface area is about 10.8, or x50 smaller than that. This means that there are about 200 airplanes over Europe land at any given time. Let's make that twice the number as airliners rarely fly over the poles and just to be sure. So 400 airplanes.

This means that area covered where there is at least one airplane that can pose a problem at any given time is about 2.5 million km2 or 1/5 of land.

There is 4/5 in chance that you won't see any airplanes in the sky at any given spot at any given time. In reality, for some places this chance is less or more depending if place you are standing on is on frequent flight paths (like close to airport, or between airports with frequent flights).

This puts things into perspective though. With that much satellites being in orbit at those altitudes, I think that we will see at least 50-100 at any given time up to considerable altitude above horizon (even if those directly above will be in earth's shadow - due to orbital distance there will be considerable amount of them visible even at astronomical darkness - in summer probably more).

Now I would classify that as being at least 1:1000 problem in comparison to passing airplanes. Don't like that ratio at all.

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26 minutes ago, Rainer said:

I have not seen a single plane at night reflecting the Sunlight  ¿?

I know, my point was just that sometimes a planes lights ruins a sub, sometimes a satellite, most times cloud. This will be a new challenge.

 

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14 hours ago, tomato said:

Hmmm, the monthly rental might be a bit steep.

He wants to makes us an interstellar species, he should do it, schedule regular sky surveys and make the data free for all. Could help prevent reenactment of the KT event by having 12,000 scopes making essentially our first always on space sensor network.

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On 28/05/2019 at 23:45, tomato said:

I cannot see the astronomy community winning out over the lure of streaming cute kitten video clips at ever increasing rates...

Post of the month, sad to say!

Oh the mobile phone! 'Tracey? Tracey? I'm in Sainsbury's. Sainsbury's. SAINSbury's. I'm in Sainsbury's? Yer breaking up. Where? The beans. I'm near the beans. The beans. No, I'm not buying any. Beans, I'm not buying any beans. We've got some at 'ome...'  Never in the field of human technology has so much been used by so many to so little effect.

:BangHead:ly

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11 hours ago, vlaiv said:

If we start discussing what US administration is allowing itself to do, that will lead us into politics and I reckon it is a no - no on this forum, so best steer clear away from such discussion.

However, legal things should not be out of bounds and we should be consulting various space treaties to asses what is legal and what not. Maybe petition to a proper address if we find a violation of a certain treaty would help? I won't hold my breath however ...

I think there is a possible violation of the Outer Space Treaty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

#####

Responsibility for activities in space

Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty deals with international responsibility, stating that "the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty" and that States Parties shall bear international responsibility for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities.

As a result of discussions arising from Project West Ford in 1963, a consultation clause was included in Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty: "A State Party to the Treaty which has reason to believe that an activity or experiment planned by another State Party in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, would cause potentially harmful interference with activities in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, may request consultation concerning the activity or experiment."

#####

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Humpf

The professional astronomy community has thumping big 'scopes with thumping big lasers to make artificial stars for AO calibration. Supposing they had a "guiding malfunction"....... :evil4:. Although meant in jest, there is a serious point here, that all this junk that stinking Musk is sending up (For no other reason than "because I can") is a danger, not just to us astronomers, but to the future of space travel itself. It needs to be got rid of pronto, and vapourising it with a big laser seems as good a way as any,

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46 minutes ago, DaveS said:

vapourising it with a big laser seems as good a way as any,

Well of course in America's Starwars project, I guess the consequences of firing big lasers at threatening satellites was better than the alternative, but I do wonder what the consequences of producing an ever-expanding metal vapour cloud would be. That might be worse than an offending 'point' of annoyance.

If we can, far better to prevent the launch into space in the first place. We do need strong international laws requiring international consultation, though how effective they would be is anyone's guess. I can't see President T bowing to the views of other nations.

Ian

Edited by The Admiral
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Depends on how diffuse the cloud is. If it's diffuse enough then any condensed particles will be too small to be a threat, unlike a cloud of collision debris.

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