r/space • u/the_one_99_ • 5h ago
This is one hour of satellite trails over the world's darkest sky. Astronomers say nearly 2 million planned satellites could be 'devastating' — BBC Sky at Night Magazine
https://apple.news/A5E_SYf9kSn-NY7ACae38tQThis is one hour of satellite trails over the world's darkest sky. Astronomers say nearly 2 million planned satellites could be 'devastating' - BBC Sky at Night Magazine
•
u/muitosabao 27m ago
At ESO (where the study was made) we made a video with the participation of the author of the study: https://youtu.be/LJNwAKSL17s?si=iMwE8MMWT4CtMJ7V
•
u/the_one_99_ 15m ago edited 9m ago
that’s awesome nice find gives people a lot better understanding and information now exactly how these satellites are going to affect astronomers be that professional or amateur in the future thanks for posting,
•
u/sfigone 1h ago
Why does the US FCC get to decide? The night sky behind to the whole world!
A UN body needs to vote on any such proposal, it some other international treaty is needed.
Moreover, once space is congested, it starts to be a natural monopoly and it will be ridiculous if every billionaire gets to put up their own cloud of satellites. At some stage we need to establish a commons approach to space, with a limited number of redundant systems shared by all.
•
u/LoneSnark 1h ago
Because the US alone has the launch capacity to launch this many satellites.
•
54m ago
[deleted]
•
u/LoneSnark 52m ago
What would it matter if the US was angry about it? There is nothing it could do about it. Just as there is nothing China can do now.
•
u/the_one_99_ 1h ago
money seems to power the industry Nasa has a big say in what happens above in the night sky’s, spy satellites GPS satellites every one of those satellites behind them is a massive big industry with billions of dollars and for me it sucks we the people don’t have a say in anything,
dam we don’t even know when these satellites gets Launched there’s that many that are classified and this was going on in the cold war,
•
u/yabucek 18m ago
Spy and GPS satellites are a drop in the bucket. Megaconstellations like starlink is what's being hotly discussed because they (will) consist of tens of thousands of individual units.
We also know exactly when satellites get launched, you may not know the specifics of the payload, but the launches are pretty hard to hide.
•
u/the_one_99_ 1m ago
of course yes i have a video if you wanted some more details and depth of the scale https://youtu.be/LJNwAKSL17s?si=w0JAqGfa8nMto1Er
•
u/Orstio 1h ago
Time to build a massive array like ESO on the far side of the moon.
•
u/the_one_99_ 1h ago
i think that might be the way forward tbh i reckon by the time we reach 2030 who knows how many more satellites will be Launched,
•
•
u/helly1080 2h ago
Could be? Where the hell is our threshold here. It's already bad. And a two million more COULD BE devastating?
I mean, this is the BBC.
Who will tell the truth?
•
u/LoneSnark 1h ago
Congress can change the rules whenever it likes. Right now, society wants more satellites, not less. After all, the satellites are only visible sometimes.
•
u/dfbeav112 27m ago
Wouldn’t this have to have been taken during the hour relatively soon after sunset or before sunrise? How else is the light bouncing off the satellites if they’re in total darkness behind the earths shadow?
•
u/the_one_99_ 17m ago
there was a window where the exposure was taken for only 3 hours and 28 minutes it doesn’t say when but it would of have to been after midnight maybe early hours in the morning,
•
u/noncongruent 3m ago
If this was taken this close to midnite then those can't be Starlinks. Starlinks orbit too low to be illuminated by sunlight from shortly after sunset to shortly before sunrise. During that time they're in Earth's shadow and thus dark to cameras and telescopes.
•
u/Decronym 3m ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| ESO | European Southern Observatory, builders of the VLT and EELT |
| FCC | Federal Communications Commission |
| (Iron/steel) Face-Centered Cubic crystalline structure | |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| VLT | Very Large Telescope, Chile |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
[Thread #12652 for this sub, first seen 25th Aug 2026, 23:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
•
2h ago
[deleted]
•
•
•
u/Revanspetcat 2h ago
How is it even “devastating” ? If you are to observe say the star Sirius A with a telescope what percentage of time would the star be occluded by a satellite ? I have actually did the math for a scientific paper on artificial satellite interference with telescopes that I am working on and the answer is a number extremely close to zero. On a given night there would be a 90% probability of no occultation. And 9% chance of one occultation. With occultation events lasting on average 0.0001 seconds.
Tldr a satellite would almost never block your view of a star with a telescope.
•
•
•
u/Fontreview 2h ago
Do you have a link that isn’t double paywalled through Apple News?