Which is to say nothing of all the professionals whose jobs depend on their ability to generate new publishable results from ground based observations. There’s a reason AAS is up in arms about this.
Tman
3351
Of those 40,000, only approx 5,000 of these are true satellites which have the reflective solar panels that cause the brightness.
If you’re an amateur astronomer, then you’ve experienced a satellite going through your FOV. Did you ever have one where it was flaring and caused you to step away from the eyepiece? I experience this perhaps once every 3-5 observing sessions. It’s super annoying (basically blinds me) and the thought that this will go from once every few nights to occurring every observing session is what I’m very concerned about.
Also my telescope is manually operated, so stepping away at high magnification, for even 30 seconds, requires me to re-find / re-orient the object.
antlers
3352
I see satellites, but not every night. I’ve never seen a flare, though, certainly nothing that spoiled my dark adaptation. I wonder if it’s a difference in latitude.
Matt_W
3353
And about 2,000 of those are in geosynchronous orbit so are either stationary or move very slowly in a stationary pattern. We’re talking about a 10x increase in the number of visible objects moving quickly across the night sky. There will be more moving objects than stationary stars visible with the naked eye.
Also possibly a difference in strength of the light collection; waaaaaay back in the day, I caught a flare a couple times as Tman described where I was basically blinded for a spell when using a university’s telescope with the ultrawide aperture. The janky piece of junk students were required to get for the class, on the other hand? Not so much (this in NO WAY is to imply your telescope is a janky piece of junk, just to highlight there can be dramatic differences).
Matt_W
3355
There were only 66 Iridium satellites in the initial constellation. Many of those have decayed out of orbit, and the replacements don’t have as bright a flare. You can only see the flares just after dusk or just before dawn, when the sun is still shining on the satellites. You can easily see them if you use an app to tell you where to look, or if you look at the night sky near the horizon for several minutes just after sunset, but with just casual viewing, you likely won’t.
That said, anytime I look at the night sky for more than a couple of minutes in a place away from city lights, I see satellites moving across my field of view. They’re common.
antlers
3356
My telescope is definitely a janky piece of junk.
It seems to me though, that if we’re going to become a space-faring civilisation, there’s only one direction things can go. LEO will inevitably host more and more of our civilisation’s infrastructure. A swarm of tiny comms sats is small beans compared to all the stuff that’s likely (hopefully!) to be up there in the next few decades.
While I get why it frustrates and pisses people off, the future that I’m hoping for is going to kill ground-based astronomy. Is there any way round that?
CraigM
3358
Very cool. I’ve done some limited star gazing, and would like to do more. Especially as my kids are getting older.
Do you just do it from your house, or do you head out towards the state forests?
Tman
3359
I do it around my house for fun things like Lunar eclipse or on request from my kids, and I’ve done countless star parties many years ago with Rose City Astronomers here locally at parks around Portland area. They put on lots of star parties btw and are a great club here in Portland.
More serious observing is in Eastern Oregon, either at the Oregon Star Party, or around Sun River.
The problem with Oregon is during the summer when the skies are the best, it doesn’t get dark until late (10-11pm) so you need to be able to stay up to midnight - 1am to get any respectable observing in. Winter is so fickle with huge dew problems, I gave it up after getting my Messiers.
Next summer is probably our best bet. I’d love to have a little star party at my house. The skies aren’t nearly as dramatic, but it’s not the drive and I can pull in all sorts of cool objects.
So, this is definitely not happening in space, but has anyone seen this Buran wind tunnel model? It’s super cool (and should be a setting in a Stalker-type game):
Djscman
3361
Nice. Whittle that into shape, add some wax and varnish, and she can get into orbit easy!
Maybe! But I don’t like its chances on reentry.
RichVR
3363
It can reenter. Once. Just once.
jpinard
3364
China is really showing how much they don’t care about their citizens:
I try to give my nutsack 20 minutes of direct sun exposure every day.
While I found this interesting and will consider subscribing to your newsletter of anus-related topics, I’m not sure how it found its way into a topic about outer space? This is more like…inner space.
schurem
3368
With one of the CIA’s upturned hubble space telescopes, aka the Keyhole sattelites, they should be able to creep right up that sunny bunghole lol.
RichVR
3369
New headline: Doctors Surprised by Surge of Perineum Cancers.
