I'm glad I never splurged on a massive telescope but it begs another question, what are they really up to and/or hiding up there? Soon amateur astronomers will struggle to get unobstructed shots of the Moon and more from Earth. Are they creating a large network of defense satellites to keep us in check or keep something out there from reaching down here?STARLINK x STARLINK: What's worse than a train of Starlink satellites cutting across an astro-photo? Two trains of Starlink satellites cutting across an astro-photo. In the Czech republic on April 19th, amateur astronomer Zdenek Bardon captured perhaps the first picture of two orthogonal Starlink trains in a single image:
"I was trying to photograph disintegrating Comet ATLAS (C2019 Y4)," says Bardon. "My local night sky suffers from light pollution, and stacking of multiple exposures is necessary in order to image the comet. Unfortunately, I had not considered the trajectories of the Starlink satellites, and many of my exposures were contaminated."
This is the latest illustration of a growing problem. To date, SpaceX has launched 360 Starlink satellites -- with more than 12,000 planned. These satellites are showing up unwelcomed in so many images of the night sky, we now have an entire photo gallery devoted to them.
The whole situation reminds Spaceweather.com reader Peter Tarr (Chief Science Writer at the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation) of classic science fiction. "For those old enough, Bardon's astonishing image of the cross-hatch pattern made by Starlink satellites is the coming-to-life of 'The Tholian Web' of the original Star Trek series."
"Only problem is, it's not the Enterprise that's caught in Elon's Web; it's Earth-based observational astronomy!" he says.
Taken from Spacewather yesterday - https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?vi ... &year=2020
From the growing problem link above:
Understanding the Impact of Satellite Constellations on Astronomy
In June 2019, the International Astronomical Union expressed concern about the negative impact that the planned mega-constellations of communication satellites may have on astronomical observations and on the pristine appearance of the night sky when observed from a dark region. We here present a summary of the current understanding of the impact of these satellite constellations.
https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau2001/
I am aware that is a long exposure shot but 12,000 is a lot of satellites and astronomers are not happy about this. The official story is this is to bring high speed internet to remote rural areas. Seriously? The last time I checked, remote tribes of humans had no use for high speed internet and live remotely to escape technology, not have it beamed down to them from above.