I fear this is only the start of it. A minimum of 3-4 constellations more will probably be launched in the near future (Russia, China, EU).

Their obvious dual-use nature makes them tempting, and a military target if a large conflict will take place in the near future. I hope their lower orbit will help any space junk burn up fast.

• aaron695

  today at 8:51 AM

  [dead]

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

• adev_

  today at 9:49 AM

  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.

  • ultratalk

    today at 9:59 AM

    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

So cool! Zoom in to find out: https://zoomhub.net/0w8pN

I'm rebuilding my RSS feed collection, and having pretty astronomy pictures is a fine addition. Thanks!

Is this all / mostly Starlink?

• vednig

  today at 9:49 AM

  It's a set of network satellites for sure either by Eutelsat or Starlink in 70:20 ratio 10% being other providers

  But all of them being LEO for sure.

if i could imagine what a Sophon from 3 body problem would look like. this is kind of it.

That looks so cool, ngl!