Astronomers Concerned About Starlink Light Pollution
May 27th, 2019Well, it’s not just me.
Via: Forbes:
SpaceX had kept the logistics of each satellite under wraps prior to the launch, but following the launch it was revealed that each satellite had a relatively large solar panel, perfect for not only gathering but reflecting sunlight back to Earth. This means anyone looking up at the stars, from any location on Earth, would always have the final Starlink constellation in view, for better or worse.
“It turns out that these satellites are easy to see with our own eyes, much brighter than we were expecting,” says astrophysicist Darren Baskill from the University of Sussex in the U.K. “If we can see them with our eyes, that means they are extremely bright for the latest generation of large, sensitive ground-based telescopes.”
Such telescopes include the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), currently under construction and designed to take wide sweeping views of the night sky to study a variety of bodies such as asteroids and comets.
While the true impact of Starlink isn’t known yet, it’s thought the LSST may have to deal with one Starlink satellite every few images, notes astrophysicist Bruce Macintosh from Stanford University in the U.S., resulting in a streak through the image. Such issues are not new to astronomers, but the sheer number of Starlink satellites is cause for concern.
“Part of the knee-jerk reaction across the astronomy community after the launch of the Starlink satellites was purely caused by a lack of information,” says astrophysicist Jessie Christiansen from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the U.S. “A significant amount of the outcry could have been avoided if there had been an impact study done in advance.”
