If the current plans of SpaceX, OneWeb, and other satellite providers unfold as laid out, the consequences for astronomy will be extraordinary, and not in a good way. On November 18, 2019, approximately 19 Starlink satellites passed over Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, disrupting astronomical observations and hindering the science being undertaken in a real, measurable way. Rubin observatory will suffer tremendous science losses. Fewer potentially hazardous asteroids will be discovered, and those that are found will have poorer orbit determinations as a result of this satellite pollution.įor specific examples, observatories like the Zwicky Transient Facility, Pan-STARRS, and the upcoming Vera C. Quite literally, Earth will be less safe as a result, particularly from a “ Don’t Look Up” type of scenario. This includes automated sky surveys designed to find and identify objects like potentially hazardous asteroids, variable objects, and transient events like stellar outbursts and explosions.
In visible light and the near-infrared, any observatory that has a wide field of view and/or sensitive detectors will be tremendously affected. So long as the detector recovers quickly, and the telescope’s field-of-view is sufficiently narrow, most of the data will still be useful for scientific purposes.īut there will be all sorts of classes of scientific observations that will suffer tremendously. Sure, there will be the occasional streak that passes through the telescope’s field of view, and that streaked portion of the data will have to be thrown away. Some observatories, mind you, will be just fine. ( Credit: IAU Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference) This already poses a substantial problem for ground-based astronomy, and the problem will likely worsen by possibly a factor of ~100 over the next decade. Even if every single satellite provider voluntarily agrees to, and meets the recommendations put forth by astronomers (and only three companies have joined that effort so far), there will soon be as many satellites in the sky as there are naturally occurring objects visible with binoculars and most telescopes.īoth radio and optical astronomy will be heavily impacted by satellite megaconstellations.
There are only ~9000 naturally occurring objects in Earth’s sky that are magnitude +6.5 or brighter, and only ~120,000 that are magnitude +9 or brighter. This, in many ways, is already catastrophic. In astronomy, we measure how bright an object appears on the magnitude scale, and the current satellites that are being launched today will range in magnitude from +6.5, right at the threshold of naked-eye viewing, to +9, which can be seen with the aid of large binoculars or any telescope. And they’re going to be moving very quickly, particularly since they’re in low-Earth orbit, meaning they’re going to intercept a lot of astronomical real estate, and every observation will be at risk.
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