Fifty thousand telecom satellites will make astronomy impossible!

[Rusted]

4 minutes ago, Beulah said:

Very evocative of Stephen Baxter's "Glass Earth Inc." story from Phase Space.. 🙂

 

I haven't read any science fiction in 50 years so must bow to your obvious expertise.

[zwartesmurf]

you can buy one of those new telescopes that will show you little images of what the 'telescope" is pointing towards in the "eyepiece". i guess that is why they developed that thing, i forget what the name of it is.

Edited January 2, 2020 by zwartesmurf

[dobblob]

Remember those wonderful toys we had as kids? "Kaleidoscopes" I think they were called.

I'll just trade in my scopes for a couple of those and won't notice the difference as I turn them to the skies...

[lukebl]

On 13/11/2019 at 14:16, don4l said:

Has anyone ever even photographed a geostationary satellite?

 

I know this is a response to an oldish post, but it's an important one.

Definitely YES, geostationary satellites can be imaged, and frequently, although stacking software can usually remove the trailing. And just because they are geostationary doesn't mean that they don't move against the backdrop of the night sky. They still create trails on images.

Most of them orbit in a line above the earth's equator, and thus from the UK are seen a few degrees below the celestial equator due to parallax. This means that they frequently photobomb images in that area, such as the Horsehead and the Orion Nebula. Admittedly, they are fairly faint, and nothing on the scale of Starlink which will occupy every part of the sky from North Pole to South Pole.

[Guest]

It's bad enough dealing with light pollution from below the sky, never mind in the sky!😡