Yeah, I kinda get why astronomers are not particularly happy with satellite constellations.

And this is just the visible spectrum.

The situation is one order of magnitude worst in radio-astronomy.

It is fair to state that satellite constellations will certainly be the main obstacle to multiple major scientific discoveries in the next decade.

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ultratalk 2 days ago | parent [-]

Opinion: We need to move our astronomical observation equipment off of Earth and onto other bodies, especially radio astronomy, which, unlike telescopes that operate in other wavelengths, is still affected by Earth's emissions in LEO/near-Earth space. We should put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon [0] to benefit from the thousands of kilometers of lunar material separating Earth's emissions from telescopes.

[0] https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO50100.2021.9438165

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope

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adrian_b 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Unfortunately, that seems to be the only solution.

However, it has serious disadvantages. It will exclude the poorer from astronomical research, except within the limits enabled by whatever cooperation the richer will be willing to do with them.

For the richer, that will make astronomical research much more expensive. When even USA, who claims to be the richest country, cuts a lot of the scientific funding, this makes likely a great reduction in the research targets that could be accomplished, even if a Lunar array of telescopes and radiotelescopes and communication relays for them were approved.

While professionals might still be able to do some work, the amateurs will be able less and less to enjoy the sight of the distant Universe.

There are already many years since I have become unable to see the sky that I enjoyed looking at when young, because it cannot be seen from the city where I live, due to light pollution (and high buildings). To see it again, I would have to go somewhere up in the mountains, far from a city or village, but I have not succeeded to do this recently. Even there now you can hardly look at the sky without seeing satellites, and it will only become much worse.

Nowadays there are many children who have never seen even once the sky that our ancestors were seeing every night, so many passages from old texts that mention the sky are unintelligible for them.

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mgfist 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I get what you're saying, but poor people want cheap internet/phone connectivity. They can't afford telescopes anyways.

And starlink (and the like) have more uses beyond good remote connectivity. They're a big reason why Ukraine didn't lose to Russia. They're also a potential avenue for people in oppressed nations to talk to the rest of the world (eg: Iran has a death penalty for starlink usage to counter this point).

	▲	adev_ 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> I get what you're saying, but poor people want cheap internet/phone connectivity. Nope. Starlink is not a tool for poor people. It's first and foremost a tool for middle class living in rural area with poor connectivity. As a comparison, it is estimated to that there is around 198M people in Nigeria with a Mobile phone connectivity. Compared around 67K Starlink users. Mobile being around 2-3x cheaper than Starlink there (even without considering the hardware), it remains an upper middle class privilege.

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adolph 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It will exclude the poorer from astronomical research, except within the limits enabled by whatever cooperation the richer will be willing to do with them.

Isn't it the case that most astronomical research uses source data from large telescopes and sky surveys? An example is the Rubin Science Platform [0] which makes available images and metadata from the Rubin Observatory along with compute and APIs?

https://data.lsst.cloud/

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inquirerGeneral 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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maxnoe 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Our telescopes actually need the (or at least an) atmosphere to function.

There are some classes of observatories, which you cannot build in space but which are still affected by satellites to some degree.

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ultratalk 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Our telescopes actually need the (or at least an) atmosphere to function.

What about Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, JWST, etc? As of my understanding, the only reason we haven't built radio and and other long-wave telescopes in space is because of their impractical size preventing them from being deployed in orbit.

> There are some classes of observatories, which you cannot build in space but which are still affected by satellites to some degree.

Examples?

	▲	voidUpdate 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I believe we haven't built radio telescopes in space because we don't need to, and building them in space would be a lot more expensive. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_electrom... This shows that wavelengths between ~10cm and ~10m are largely unaffected by the atmosphere, so you wouldn't gain much from putting receivers of those wavelengths in space. Spitzer and JWST (IR), and Chandra (x-ray) operate in bands that are generally blocked by the atmosphere, and Hubble gets better images than a similarly sized earth-based telescope because of the atmospheric distortion (stars don't "twinkle" when you're in space), however there are still earth-based visible light telescopes because you can more easily build a massive one on earth than in space

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BenjiWiebe 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What? The atmosphere gets in the way. Ever heard of an (amateur/)astronomer talking about 'good seeing'? That's when the atmosphere is hindering you less than usual.

The limiting factor of passive optical telescopes on earth is the atmosphere.

	▲	SiempreViernes 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		They are talking about very high energy gamma-ray telescopes, the Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes.

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AntiUSAbah 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Its still worth while for every normal human to have access to space if the benefit of this stuff is not relevant for most people.

And with 9 million customers its not.

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christophilus 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed. It’s the only solution short of a ban on constellations.

	▲	silon42 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		IMO, everyone that launches/operates a constellation should pay for launch of large telescope every 5-10 years (assuming science organizations can fund/build them).

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NegativeLatency 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or even out past the heliosphere/heliopause

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Aboutplants 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Any chance of CubeSat style of telescopes at some point?

	▲	SiempreViernes 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, there have already been some launched and predictably they are only adequate to look at the bright stuff we already knew about from the big telescopes. A small telescope is just a small telescope even when you put it in space.

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iso1631 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> . We should put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon [0] to benefit from the thousands of kilometers of lunar material separating Earth's emissions from telescopes.

Do you really think a starlink style installation won't be put in orbit of the moon before such a telescope could be funded?

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adev_ 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Do you really think a starlink style installation won't be put in orbit of the moon before such a telescope could be funded?

There are ITUs rules that forbid that and the far side of the moon is declared as radio quiet.

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bluGill 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Those rules won't last long once (IF) there are significant numbers of people on the moon. The rules are easy to agree to today (50 years ago) because nobody could do anything otherwise anyway. Once the rules are getting in the way of a significant number of people they will change.

I make no predictions how they will change, but the current rules are obviously unworkable if significant numbers of people live in space. I also make no predictions on if we will ever get significant numbers of people living in space - there are a lot of hard/expensive problems that may not be solvable.

	▲	adev_ 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Those rules won't last long once (IF) there are significant numbers of people on the moon. Maybe. If you believe we are heading to a situation with large numbers of colonies on the moon. For now we are no way there and already struggle to just get back there.

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SiempreViernes 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Starlinks are already spewing out into supposedly protected radio bands on Earth, good look getting these rules respected on the Moon when they aren't here.

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chris_va 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not to disagree, but stacking a series of exposures with a sigma-clipped mean (or similar) should still get a nice image.

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oofbey 2 days ago | parent [-]

Exactly. It’s not that hard to remove the satellites. It’s almost easier than whining about it. But whining is more fun.

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adrian_b a day ago | parent [-]

It is not hard to remove the satellites, but that is not free.

It reduces the signal-to-noise ratio of the image, making more difficult the detection of faint objects.

	▲	MarkusQ a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It _increases_ the signal to noise ratio. It's a denoising technique, and that's what they do. Compared to the processing already done to get data from astronomical data, yeah, it's essentially free.
	▲	oofbey a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		True. But that’s never the framing you hear from astronomers. It’s how the satellites are “ruining” the pictures, like this whole thread. The SNR degradation isn’t even very much. Noise goes down by 1/sqrt(N) samples. In a stack like this might have 5-40 images depending on how they did it. Typically a satellite will only show up on one of those images for a given pixel. So by excluding that image from the stack that pixel’s noise would go up by a ratio of sqrt(N/(N-1)) which for 5-40 images is between 12% more noise and 1% more noise. Only the pixels with satellite tracks. True there’s more noise if you remove the satellites. But it’s probably only a few percent noisier, and only in the places where the satellite flew. Add a few more images to the stack and accept that the world is changing.

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oofbey 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Computational photography has long been table stakes for astronomers. They just need to up their game on satellite rejection algorithms. Satellites look nothing like stars, and as such are pretty easy to remove with software. Pictures like this which leave them in are just there to make a point.

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HumblyTossed 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Doesn't matter. We, as a society, have said we're willing to give up nature in exchange for money machines the go brrrrr.

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MagicMoonlight 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

So what? Astronomy doesn’t actually produce anything meaningful.

Hell, astronomers were telling us the sun orbited the earth for 99% of human history. Shoot forward to the present day and they can tell us… the universe started at some point somehow. Great job guys. Really earning those billions in grants.

Actually going to space has far more value.

	▲	ragebol 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Have you heard of Kessler Syndrome? More satellites means higher risk on that happening and not going to space until all the debris of a collision deorbits.