Starlink Trails

[carastro]

I posted this up on the Anyone Playing Tonight thread last night and we all decided this must be Starlink trails as not typical of a plane trail.

The good news is I decided to stack it with the other data I had collected to see if the software would process it out, and it did in Astroart Sigma average stacking.

I thought I would share this with the rest of the SGL Community.

This is a single 900 sec Ha sub stretched in Maxim.  

[Stuart1971]

25 minutes ago, carastro said:

I posted this up on the Anyone Playing Tonight thread last night and we all decided this must be Starlink trails as not typical of a plane trail.

The good news is I decided to stack it with the other data I had collected to see if the software would process it out, and it did in Astroart Sigma average stacking.

I thought I would share this with the rest of the SGL Community.

This is a single 900 sec Ha sub stretched in Maxim.  

Are you sure that is Starlink, as they all in a single line..... 🤔🤔

[carastro]

Not 100% sure but planes normally have 3 lines, all of different spacing and strength with an obvious light flash every so often in the strail.  This has none of that.  By the way this was taken with a Samyang 135mm F2 lens so a wide field. 

Starlink are sending up satellites in batches which are supposed to be running parallel to each other, none of the regular satellites do that, so really by a process of elimination presume that's what they are. 

But in any case, whatever it is it must be as bright as Starlink and the software processed it out. 

Carole  

Edited June 25, 2020 by carastro

[dobblob]

I would be pretty sure this is StarLink. I captured a similar image on the 12th with the flash rate looking about the same.

I checked the time against Stellarium which showed no satellites for the area of sky. I assume that Stellarium had no update yet and anyway why would it show satellites that are still jockeying for their final orbits? StarLinks are often strung out like that and do not necessarily follow single file.

DSS kappa-sigma clipping got rid of them easily. Hooray ! We have weapons that can defeat you Mr. Musk.......

[Wyvernp]

It's great to have the tools available so that we no longer have to waste precious subs due to flybys. I've used winsorized sigma clipping since I found out about it from one of Chris woodhouse's videos and it's always done a very good job.

[MarkAR]

At the moment there aren't many pieces of Musks trash in the sky. When his and all the others are up in a few years there will possibly be over 50000 at varying altitudes crossing the sky at around 1 every 1º of view.

How will sigma clipping cope when you have multiple trails, possibly re-inforcing each other on different subs?

[Wyvernp]

7 minutes ago, MarkAR said:

How will sigma clipping cope when you have multiple trails, possibly re-inforcing each other on different subs?

That is a worry, I guess it will depend on the orbits.

[Stuart1971]

1 hour ago, MarkAR said:

At the moment there aren't many pieces of Musks trash in the sky. When his and all the others are up in a few years there will possibly be over 50000 at varying altitudes crossing the sky at around 1 every 1º of view.

How will sigma clipping cope when you have multiple trails, possibly re-inforcing each other on different subs?

Trash to you, but very helpful to people in some far corners of the globe..... maybe put yourself in there shoes, and then see if you still think they are trash....

Dont get me wrong I am a lover of all things astronomy, and would rather they not be in the way of my sensor...but things move on... 👍😀

[Kyle Allen]

Don’t we have other less obtrusive satellites for that purpose?

[MarkAR]

3 hours ago, Stuart1971 said:

Trash to you, but very helpful to people in some far corners of the globe.

May be, but why not just put them in geosynchronous orbit above those areas ???

Probably because they are mainly 3rd world countries, there will be a subscription charge and the cost of the receiver. I think many would prefer food and water.

The proposed networks will help a small percentage in the western world where internet of any sort is difficult but the main people to benefit will be the international stock exchange traders who will receive information a few thousandths of a second faster.

[Corncrake]

Physics is the problem with less obtrusive !

Geostationary requires high power and big antenna to talk to it [long way away at 33000km, inverse square law and all that]
and a modestly big antenna to listen to it. (Think sat dish on side of house to listen) And lets not think about what is needed on the sat for power amps and solar panels to enable that. Then there are the big antennas needed at the uplink ground station to get Coronation Street up to the sat in the first place before it is sent on its way back down to you!!

But the even bigger problem for 'tinternet is the speed of light (well speed of em waves ! ) round trip delay =approx 1/2sec to goestationary.

Starlink = low latency and low infrastucture on the ground.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Corncrake