SpaceX Starlink

[DahnGee]

Got very lucky and saw the SpaceX Starlink satellites just after midnight Saturday morning from home in Brooklyn Center. Long line of satellites moving along from NW to NE. They passed north about 00:08. They were brighter than expected, probably around first magnitude. They went somewhat below Polaris and were definitely brighter than it.

Found a blog with a video https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2019/0 ... pacex.html

Pretty spectacular and concerning for what the sky will be like when there's over 1000 of them in the full deployment.

[Sureshks]

Hi Don,

Clayton, Will and I also saw them twice last night from Lac Qui Parle State Park about 125 miles west of the Twin Cities. The first time was around 12:15am, when I spotted them just north of the zenith while we were doing some public viewing. Everyone present was stunned by the appearance... I'd say the "satellite train" was at least 20 degrees long, with individual members ranging from 2nd to 4th mag. A few might've been even brighter.

At first my reaction was "really slow moving bollide", then "satellite burning up on re-entry", then finally "really long flock of birds". Of course, none of these were correct. Then I remembered the SpaceX launch and we figured out that this was what it was.

We saw them again in the far north around 1:47am. About 6 in the line remained bright during this pass, while the rest faded in and out. With Will's binoculars I saw that when faded out, these satellites still made a ghostly "cloud" line, intersprinkled with these few brighter ones.

In my 35 years in amateur astronomy, never have I seen anything like this conga line of satellites before. Slightly reminiscent of the 1994 Hubble images of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in the days before impacting Jupiter.

Suresh

[heinerv]

There is a YouTube video also. Search on starlink

[heinerv]

I wonder what it will be like when there are thousands of these going around the earth, especially for imagers.

[DahnGee]

Birds was my first thought Suresh. I've seen birds from the cities moving like that illuminated by the light pollution. Then I thought it was a plane towing something and finally realized what it was when I put the finder on my scope on them.

I missed them on the 1:45ish pass, from your description they were probably too low.

[Dennis_Faith]

I wonder what it will be like when there are thousands of these going around the earth, especially for imagers.

I have to agree there, especially with multiple companies planning to do the same sort of thing. Wide field imager would probably be able to work around them once they are dispersed but it seems like it risks making the night skies a confusing jumble of "fireflies"


On a related note, by chance our family had plans to be in Florida the week of the original launch dates.. We made it up to KSC and were anxiously awaiting the first two launch attempts...alas the first two scrubbed launches spoiled the lucky streak. Have never seen a launch, got so, so close but now I am hooked...

[Dick Jacobson]

I wonder what it will be like when there are thousands of these going around the earth, especially for imagers.

These systems will totally destroy the beauty of the night sky. They have to be stopped.

[petemn2004]

From Wikipedia:

"SpaceX has plans to deploy nearly 12,000 satellites in three orbital shells by the mid-2020s: initially placing approximately 1600 in a 550-kilometer (340 mi)-altitude shell, subsequently placing ~2800 Ku- and Ka-band spectrum sats at 1,150 km (710 mi) and ~7500 V-band sats at 340 km (210 mi)."

This is nuts!

Mark

[Deane Clark]

At least Elon Musk is aware of this, if not as concerned as he probably should be. The satellites are small but they each have a big solar panel that makes them brighter than anyone expected.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanoc ... f3124259b6

[SEmert]

I wonder what it will be like when there are thousands of these going around the earth, especially for imagers.

These systems will totally destroy the beauty of the night sky. They have to be stopped.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
I doubt there is any stopping these networks of satellites. Unfortunately, the "many" includes universal high speed Internet for anyone, anywhere, and the "few" are the astronomers.

[NHartwell]

I saw the Starlink train Saturday night in the Brainerd Lakes area. At first I thought it was a satellite breaking up and entering the atmosphere as I saw flickers and variation in brightness in the individual points of light. It was in the southeast sky and around 11ish. I found some wifi to investigate spaceweather.com and found that others had observed the train.
After all these years of observing and astrophotography, I cannot believe I witnessed the end of an era where the night sky will never be the same. It kind of reminds me of the futility of fighting light pollution. It was a site to behold and I will marvel at future launches as time runs out for we few.

"There are already 4,900 satellites in orbit, which people notice ~0% of the time," Elon Musk wrote. "Starlink won't be seen by anyone unless looking very carefully & will have ~0% impact on advancements in astronomy."

I noticed........

[Dick Jacobson]

I wonder what it will be like when there are thousands of these going around the earth, especially for imagers.

These systems will totally destroy the beauty of the night sky. They have to be stopped.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
I doubt there is any stopping these networks of satellites. Unfortunately, the "many" includes universal high speed Internet for anyone, anywhere, and the "few" are the astronomers.

Is there a "need" to instantly download any movie ever made, to anywhere on Earth? I don't buy that. Low-bandwidth communication is certainly important. The Starlink satellites have huge solar panels because they need lots of power for high-bandwidth links to small antennas.

There are other alternatives to landlines for remote areas. High altitude unmanned aircraft, powered by solar panels and batteries, are being developed. 5G cell systems are another alternative.

If Starlink is completed, at least 100 very bright satellites will be visible from any location, totally dominating the night sky. Birds that navigate by the stars are likely to be affected.

If you want to live or travel in a remote location, you should be willing to accept some limits on communication.

[SEmert]

Hi Dick, not arguing with you there! I also wish these commercial ventures took this into consideration. Shucks, with the sky polluted with all these moving objects it'll probably even make finding near Earth asteroids more difficult. I just was putting in writing what I assume to be the opinion of the general populace.

[rdavidjohnson63]

What I wonder about with this is, if you take this quote from Musk "potentially helping billions of economically disadvantaged people is the greater good,", how the heck are these "economically disadvantaged people" supposed to connect to these satellites?

I guess the next step is to get cheap electronic devices into their hands. How are they supposed to get one of these devices? Is Musk planning a mass air drop of devices to carpet "economically disadvantaged" locations?

Oh, but wait, how are they supposed to power/recharge these devices in these "economically disadvantaged" locations?

Who is going to pay for all this sh!t?

I can only assume it is time to put on my aluminum foil hat and try to prevent this new phase of spying on us as best as I can, since you know that is the real purpose of all these orbiting devices.

[tugger]

What I wonder about with this is, if you take this quote from Musk "potentially helping billions of economically disadvantaged people is the greater good,", how the heck are these "economically disadvantaged people" supposed to connect to these satellites?

I guess the next step is to get cheap electronic devices into their hands. How are they supposed to get one of these devices? Is Musk planning a mass air drop of devices to carpet "economically disadvantaged" locations?

Oh, but wait, how are they supposed to power/recharge these devices in these "economically disadvantaged" locations?

Who is going to pay for all this sh!t?

I can only assume it is time to put on my aluminum foil hat and try to prevent this new phase of spying on us as best as I can, since you know that is the real purpose of all these orbiting devices.

Sh!t.......I like it.

I don't get why people are ripping on him. We don't even know what's going to happen. He's pushing the envelope and we need more of that in society.

[Sureshks]

Hi all,

Here is the first response from the International Dark Sky Assn. re: Starlink:

http://darksky.org/starlink-response/

Basically... they're monitoring the situation and hope that all involved parties respect our dark sky heritage.

Suresh

[petemn2004]

The magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology in their May 6-19, 2019 issue had an article starting on Page 50 titled "Showdown at LEO" (Low earth orbit). This was mostly about the late change FCC approval for SpaceX's modified operational plans for their Starlink satellites that may interfere with the plans for competitors. SpaceX's newly approved licensed plan is to fly 1,584 satellites at the lower orbital altitude of 324 miles versus the original plan of that described 4,425 member network at five altitudes from 690-823 miles. Obviously at lower altitudes the satellites will be much brighter when viewed at night from Earth.

The article identified two types of uses of low earth orbital satellites. Communications (like Starlink) and Earth Observation. It is disheartening to see the projected number of low earth orbital satellites: 13,529 communications (32 companies) and 1,407 Earth Observation (34 companies).

It is the larger satellites like SpaceX's Starlink at 850 pounds and its large solar panel (not the small 3U CubeSats) flying at low orbital altitude that is the problem.

Heavens-Above.com has the following for the leading Starlink satellite for a pass tomorrow morning at 3:06 AM: Brightness 3.1 magnitude (270 miles orbital altitude) at 82 degree elevation.

At high latitudes like Minnesota's in the summertime they may be visible all night long. We have a short summer, long twilight, mosquitoes and now this!


Mark

[Deane Clark]

Don’t forget smoke from Canada. Again. Today

[Sureshks]

Another good read on Starlink and it's impacts on astronomy.

https://www.universetoday.com/142320/ca ... ky-menace/

Suresh

[SEmert]

Don’t forget smoke from Canada. Again. Today

Ugh. As if virtually all last summer wasn't bad enough. If this keeps up, Clear Dark Sky and Clear Outside may have to add a "smoke" category to their predictions.

[setnes]

A simple, "is Canada on fire?" Boolean is probably enough.... then just hard code it to be true.

[SEmert]

A simple, "is Canada on fire?" Boolean is probably enough.... then just hard code it to be true.

Or perhaps an "And" function of two Booleans. 1. Is Canada on fire? 2. Is the jet stream flowing over southern Minnesota like usual? Ok, so since the jet stream in summer IS usually directly overhead, it goes back to your single Boolean.

Just watching the NOAA satellite loops - like the color composite one - https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/s ... &length=96 - today clearly shows the smoke band over southwestern and southern Minnesota.

But getting back on-topic of Starlink, I suppose for imaging it's going to mean a lot more shorter exposures and a lot more images thrown away because of satellite streaks. I bet for actual science they are really going to put a crimp in many of the images.