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November 23, 2019 04:34 pm
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/uJV-TvTTJpA/does-spacexs-starlink-project-pose-an-existential-threat-to-astronomy
Does SpaceX's Starlink Project Pose an Existential Threat to Astronomy?
Earlier this week Forbes reported on two Chilean astronomers "expecting to see images of distant stars and galaxies. Instead, they saw a train of SpaceX satellites crossing the night sky, a worrying sign of what might be to come for astronomy." Now Digital Trends decries SpaceX's "proposed launch of tens of thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbit where they will form a mega-constellation, making much of our present astronomical efforts impossible."Earlier this month, SpaceX launched another 60 of its Starlink satellites as part of its plan to provide high-speed internet to every part of the planet. However, as useful as this may sound, an astronomer who spoke to Digital Trends said that there are plenty of potential negative ramifications. "Even as professional astronomers, we've only just woken up to the fact that [this had the potential to be] a serious problem in the near future," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell has long been an enthusiastic proponent of satellite launches. Since 1989, he has written and edited Jonathan's Space Report, a free internet newsletter which documents technical details of satellite launches. "I'm a little sad to be on the other side of the coin, but I think it's an important issue that needs to be talked about," he said. McDowell's fear -- shared by others in his field -- is that the sheer number of satellite launches set to take place in the coming years will make it virtually impossible to carry out particular types of ground-based astronomy. Already astrophysicists carrying out long exposures, lasting around 15 seconds, frequently have their images ruined by a satellite trail passing overhead. Many times brighter than the "super faint galaxy" an astronomer might be looking for, this essentially ruins the image. "That's an annoyance, but you work around it," McDowell said. "You take multiple images , trusting that at least one of them will not have the trail. But when we get to the point where there are tens of thousands of very bright satellites in low orbit, the worry is that almost every image you take will have these trails on it... At some point certain types of astronomical observation will just not be feasible any more...." With Starlink as currently envisaged, when it's fully deployed there will be more naked eye-visible satellites in the sky than there are stars," McDowell continued.... "The sky will be seething instead of static. That is a [major] change to our environment."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/uJV-TvTTJpA/does-spacexs-starlink-project-pose-an-existential-threat-to-astronomy
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