NASA Wants You To Help Track Satellite Light Pollution (slashgear.com) 16
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes SlashGear: NASA wants the public to help it track very-low Earth orbit (VLEO) satellites and the potential light pollution issues they may cause. The space agency launched a public science project that anyone can participate in, stating that it only requires a tripod, smartphone, and the use of a website that reveals when satellites will be overhead. Similarly, the European Space Observatory is also tracking these satellites for the same reason.
VLEO satellites like the Starlink clusters from SpaceX have raised concerns from astronomers and some space agencies over their potential for disrupting night sky observations. These satellites are fairly bright in the twilight sky, appearing like bright dots or streaks in images, depending on the camera's shutter speed duration and some other factors.
VLEO satellites like the Starlink clusters from SpaceX have raised concerns from astronomers and some space agencies over their potential for disrupting night sky observations. These satellites are fairly bright in the twilight sky, appearing like bright dots or streaks in images, depending on the camera's shutter speed duration and some other factors.
A couple thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)
The Starlink satellites at present do not provide much of an issue outside of twilight time, but will that always be so? Get them a bit higher, and the length of time they illuminate will likewise get longer.
There really isn't much work during twilight, save for a bit of Mercury observations. So call me concerned, but not freaked. I'll participate in this project, sounds like a bit of fun even.
Re: (Score:2)
The Starlink satellites at present do not provide much of an issue outside of twilight time
Maybe visually they don't but they are still visible in any photographs or measurements, and visible with the naked eye too in a really dark sky. Also something doesn't need to be bright to have an effect take for example the most spectacular of astronomy events, people can't actually see the moon against the sky during the eclipse.
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Maybe visually they don't but they are still visible in any photographs or measurements, and visible with the naked eye too in a really dark sky.
What? They are visible only at twilight, when the sun still hits them, but not you. More than 2 hours after sunset, they go to "invisible", so are not visible in any photographs, and are not visible with the naked eye.
The only effect they have on professional astronomers is being most visible when some planets are visible. So low on the horizon effects may only occur in certain times that coincide with the presence of the visible satellites.
But any "real" astronomy can be done in a slightly shortened w
Light telescopes are dead, Jim (Score:1)
Just like radio telescopes on earth, thanks to cellphones.
So nio one has heard of ... (Score:1)
There's no app. No smartphone feature utilization. (Score:3)
NASA wants you to manually find your own location, look it up against heavens-above database of satellites, and manually aim your camera and manually select optimal shutter settings, manually take photos, manually tag constellations and manually upload.
Why use a smartphone at all? None of the smart features are being used. Any dumb camera can do this, better. A good smartphone app could automate everything but the aiming, and could assist at that as well.
Re: (Score:2)
I think this is more of a publicity effort (stunt?) than anything. There are several All Sky Cams [allskycam.com] they can access. It should be nothing for them to setup several long exposure DSLRs with a reasonably wide angle lens across a better determined set of sites. Likely for less cost than collecting and analyzing data sent in from the public. That being said, Heavens-Above [heavens-above.com] is a great website and if this helps them then great.
Its not the VISIBLE light (Score:2)
These are only visible when twilight is too bright anyway, but they broadcast radio waves and are quite 'bright'. I would hate to loose the new virtual radioscopes as big as Earth - no more event horizons to be seen? Would a swarm of these interfere with IR observations? I guess they are "warm".
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The "as big as Earth" telescopes like New Horizons work on extremely long wavelengths, anything like Starlink will not be a problem.
And yet.... (Score:1)
We have idiots like this:
https://www.space.com/pepsi-dr... [space.com]
and this:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/ar... [mentalfloss.com]
Who tried to pollute the heavens with corporate advertising
The company in the first example lied and said "Ohnonononono, it wasn't going to be a space billboard" because they were about to get tarred and feathered and hung from a tree, but don't think for a second they won't stop trying. In our increasingly indoctrinated, micromanaged world, someone will become successful at polluting the night sky with ads.
Re: (Score:1)
"second they won't stop trying"
Bleh, meant "Don't think for a second that they won't keep trying"