Starlink pass 18th January 2024

[lukebl]

Musk's vanity project passed over here this evening.

I showed it to my son who was most impressed, but I can't help feeling there's something sinister about it all, bombarding the planet with the internet and filling the sky with more junk. In the olden days it was megalomaniac dictators who controlled the masses of nations. Now it's the fabulously wealthy who control all of us. If that isn't straying beyond the forum's guidelines.

Anyway, I capured these images of it with a Canon 700d and Samyang 8mm lens at f/3.5. I set it to take 6 second exposures every 3 seconds at ISO 1600, but the gaps between exposures is obviously longer. I guess that's because of the time taken to write to the disk.

This is a stacked set of 48 images, stacked in Startrails Version 2.3. See how the trails disappear into the earth's shadow when they approach Perseus. The bright thing is the moon!

Single frame:

Here's a video. One frame every half second. The neighbour's car illuminates the trees and house half way through!

 

Edited January 19 by lukebl

[Mr H in Yorkshire]

Musk is definitely a 'Bond' super villain.

[Mandy D]

@lukebl I was imaging the conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon as they went over. I thought about turning the camera to them, but I would have needed to swap lenses. Nice to see that you captured it.

[JOC]

13 hours ago, lukebl said:

Here's a video. One frame every half second. The neighbour's car illuminates the trees and house half way through!

Wow!  aren't there a lot of them?  I'm not sure I agree with that sort of impact.  Is there not an international body that can control what gets lobbed into space?

[Mognet]

11 hours ago, JOC said:

Is there not an international body that can control what gets lobbed into space?

For Starlink they've needed the approval of the US Federal Communications Commission (https://www.space.com/spacex-fcc-approval-7500-starlink-satellites) I've not seen anything that covers worldwide approval for launches so maybe there isn't anything in place, although with current geopolitics countries could block each other from launching satellites if there were.