StaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhLink...

[PhotoGav]

I’ve just gathered tonight’s first 1200s Luminance sub of the Iris Nebula and this is what I am up against... 

It’s as though that Musk person knows exactly how to wind me up.

 

 

[MarkAR]

Just wait a few years for the other 50 000 satellites to go into orbit.

[PhotoGav]

[Hallingskies]

So far I have not had too many subframes photobombed by Musk’s selfish wealth creation project, and sigma stacking has cleaned them up.  It will be interesting to see how your final image scrubs up.  

What software fixes can be used to remove lines?  I gather the latest version of AstroArt has a vertical line removal tool, assume you would have to rotate the subframe first which would be a pain.

[michael8554]

I use HeavensAbove to predict which ones are going to be a problem.

Then I chuck Tesla Roadsters at them to deflect their path.

Michael

[RT65CB-SWL]

8 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

I use HeavensAbove to predict which ones are going to be a problem.

Then I chuck Tesla Roadsters at them to deflect their path.

Michael

Either that or boycott Tesla and The Boring Company merchandise.

[PhotoGav]

Here's the combined lumminance data I have so far, 4hrs 40min, with no rejection at all. Sorry no calibration frames used either, so it's pretty ugly anyway!

Hopefully they will all be eliminated in the proper rejection stack, but I fear that I will have to bin the subs with the brightest trails.

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by PhotoGav

[Hallingskies]

To quote HRH Prince Charles on the subject of carbuncles, “That really is appalling”.

Probably need to pack up and sell my kit while it still has some resale value.  In a few years it seems the night sky will be so full of satellites that deep sky imaging may well be impossible.

Still, at least the FaceTube brigade will be able to post their cat pictures or whatever a few milliseconds faster, so trashing the night sky will be a small price to pay.

May the next massive solar storm fry Musk’s space junk to a (hopefully blackened) crisp...

[Zakalwe]

14 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

I’ve just gathered tonight’s first 1200s Luminance sub of the Iris Nebula and this is what I am up against... 

It’s as though that Musk person knows exactly how to wind me up.

 

 

 

Two things:

Sigma rejection in stacking will almost certainly remove the trails.

You are imaging when there is no true darkness. Satellite trails will be at their brightest when the Sun is just below the horizon which is exactly where it is in the summer months. You might as well complain about there being no true darkness and damn whoever put the Sun in the sky. Complaining about that wouldn't be as fashionable though.

 

[cuivenion]

We'll just tell all those fashionable astronomers at professional observatories to stop worrying then. The problem is going to get a lot worse once there's upwards 100,000 of these satellites, and to be honest I don't see the correlation between the position of the sun, darkness levels and a billionaire's vanity project ruining the night sky for the rest of us.

Edited June 25, 2020 by cuivenion

[michael8554]

The problem for pro astronomers, particularly those doing widefield Dinosaur Killer hunts, is that the trails can hide a target.

Michael

[theropod]

I have a nice little scope, and enjoy looking at stuff “way out there”, but my thing is wide field work. Mainly I try to photo meteor falls. A few nights ago I was reclining in my lawn lounger when I picked up, by eye, a string of Elon’s playthings. From the time I started counting them until the apparent last one past 21 clones crossed the exact same path. They were about 13 seconds apart as my best guess from nearly occulting some bright star. Their speed suggests a very low orbit as these little dots were fast. Little as the dots were they were bright. I checked the time and it was almost 11 pm. Naturally my tracker and phone were pointed wrong (or right to miss) to capture the little abominations, which is just as well. I’m sure there will soon be a time when I cannot point at any segment of the sky and expect a streak free shot, and those faint speck meteors will be very hard to pick out.

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by theropod
Typo

[Hallingskies]

3 hours ago, Zakalwe said:

 

Two things:

Sigma rejection in stacking will almost certainly remove the trails.

You are imaging when there is no true darkness. Satellite trails will be at their brightest when the Sun is just below the horizon which is exactly where it is in the summer months. You might as well complain about there being no true darkness and damn whoever put the Sun in the sky. Complaining about that wouldn't be as fashionable though.

 

Musk’s sky-wreckers are a man-made phenomenon.  There’s a difference.  “Fashionable” doesn’t come into it.

[knobby]

I still can't believe he's been allowed to do it 😫

[PhotoGav]

I am certainly hoping that rejection algorithms will eliminate these trails. I don’t have total success normally though, so am a bit concerned.

It’s true that these satellites are more illuminated in the summer months when the Sun is not so far beneath the horizon, but come on, that is becoming a curtain of hardware, being drawn across our view of the night sky. The motivation is profit. I can do something about man putting junk up in space. I can’t do too much about the Sun not sinking far enough for a couple of months a year!!

Interesting comments about PHOs being obscured from surveys. Everyone, please cross your fingers...

[tomato]

Well I tell myself it’s another good excuse for dual rigs, capture more subs in the ever reducing window of Starlink free sky.😎

[discardedastro]

4 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

I am certainly hoping that rejection algorithms will eliminate these trails. I don’t have total success normally though, so am a bit concerned.

I do think there is room for improvement on pre-stack rejection algorithms. Definitely an area I'd like to spend time on. I've been thinking about trying to generate some synthetic data, train a ML model on how to spot trails, and then just mask all the trails and a buffer region as zero pixels so standard low rejection stacking can ignore the affected paths when stacking. Feels like it'd be a kinda fun project.

Of course, it's fine for us lot mucking about doing cosmetic fixes for pretty photos. Less good if you're trying to get actual data for scientific purposes.

[Avdhoeven]

I do understand the issues with Starlink (I hate it myself also), but all is relative. This is pretty easy to take out with the proper rejection algorithms. Last night I drove to a dark site to do imaging and 2 planes went overhead just before I arrived. They left contrails and because of the low winds and bad conditions they spread out during the next 3 hours until they covered almost 40% of the sky. Result is that I could almost completely forget my imaging session. But nobody is complaining about that in the astrophotography world. I think we should put our priorities right and fight Starlink, but even more fight what is going on closer to the surface of the Earth to be honest...

[Adreneline]

It is frustrating but the satellites wouldn't be there had they not been approved by the US Federal Communications Commission who clearly know what is best for the whole world!

Whilst we're on the topic of frustrating I set up to take a few (20) OIII subs of Sh2-129 last night - this was the first 180s sub I collected.

Doh!

I'm not aware of any software that can fix that one other than the Trash folder!

Fortunately the other 19 only had the odd satellite trail to contend with - and a sizeable LP gradient.

If it wasn't a challenge it wouldn't be worth doing  

CS

Adrian  

[tomato]

That’s an aeroplane though, not Starlink? Some of the trails look quite diffuse and there is a lot of variation in brightness.

I agree, it would be very special software that could fix that one.

[Zakalwe]

3 hours ago, tomato said:

That’s an aeroplane though, not Starlink? Some of the trails look quite diffuse and there is a lot of variation in brightness.

I agree, it would be very special software that could fix that one.

Yep, definitely a 'plane...you can see the belly nav lights in the trail.

 

Right, I'm off to throw rocks at my nearest airport....

[Zakalwe]

13 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

The motivation is profit.

Strictly speaking, the motivation is to provide funding to make Man an interplanetary species, just in case a lump of rock from the sky wipes us out. Our species is unique and leaving it on one planet to the vagaries of some random piece of rock is too risky.

I'm comfortable with some home astronomers having their hobbies affected if that's the price.

[Astroscot2]

Clouds are a bigger worry for astrophotography 😉

[PhotoGav]

1 hour ago, Zakalwe said:

Strictly speaking, the motivation is to provide funding to make Man an interplanetary species, just in case a lump of rock from the sky wipes us out. Our species is unique and leaving it on one planet to the vagaries of some random piece of rock is too risky.

I'm comfortable with some home astronomers having their hobbies affected if that's the price.

That's an interesting angle on this.

Just to broaden the discussion - do you think that Man is going to be able to 'planet hop' within our solar system successfully and on a 'beyond a tourist visa' basis? The next star system is unknown and too far away for quite some time to come yet, I would imagine. Is Mars really the answer for Homo Sapiens? Bearing in mind that Mars is just as likely to be struck by some random piece of rock. In fact, I would imagine that it is actually far more likely to be struck by rocks, given its lack of atmosphere and proximity to the asteroid belt. I can see that it doubles the chance of survival, given that if one goes we have a back-up to rely on.

This is such a fascinating area of astronomy / space travel / ethics / philosophy / technology!

[Adreneline]

5 hours ago, tomato said:

That’s an aeroplane though

 

1 hour ago, Zakalwe said:

Yep, definitely a 'plane...you can see the belly nav lights in the trail.

Indeed it is an aeroplane - at about 500 feet - never mind the belly nav lights, in daylight you can see the faces at the windows!

Moving from CCD to CMOS has been a benefit for me inasmuch that I no longer try to get 300+ second exposure subs. Settling for 180s/120s has reduced my discard rate a lot. At night a certain carrier's planes can be landing at roughly 5/6 minute intervals. I don't just pray for a clear night I also pray for a westerly wind!

1 hour ago, Zakalwe said:

Our species is unique

We are indeed unique - and maybe that's how it should be. Some were getting excited about Betelgeuse going supernova a few months back with little apparent thought for any life form that event might extinguish either in it's own solar system or a close neighbour.

I just hope we earn the right to travel to another star system long before we gain the ability and with what I learnt when I did my physics degree it is perhaps no bad thing that we are destined to stay right here.

Right - that's enough deep thinking for today - I'm off to paint a wall.

Adrian