Can You Find the Comet?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

My time to shine! I've spent yesterday morning to track the photo down and answer this question. The APOD description is lacking. Yes, this was an exaggerated stack of 153 four-second exposures (the rejection map of the satellite trails was added on top of the image), and the gaps happened when the camera took its time to save between two exposures.

Here is a link to the original photo and it's description (German) by Uli Fehr: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Nachtfotografie/posts/264063...

Probably exactly that. If you take a single 10 minute exposure (or really, anything more than a few seconds) you'll get noticeable star trails if you don't put your camera on a rotating mount. Stacking multiple exposures also has other nice benefits such as noise canceling itself out and being able to remove satellite trails.

Last time I did astrophotography was a few years ago, before Starlink made the problem considerably worse, but satellite trails were relatively easy to remove with stacking. I'm sure it's harder now but definitely still possible, so I'm assuming in this case leaving them in was done on purpose to highlight the problem.

EDIT: Looking better at the picture, I belive this was taken with a star tracker and then composited with a shorter exposure of the foreground. Notice how the foreground, even far away, looks considerably blurrier than the stars, and how the tower in the background has some light streaks. This is exactly what you'll see if you use a star tracker. Rather than star trails, you'll have "foreground trails". This would explain why there are relatively few gaps in the satellite trails, since the exposures can be much longer.

My guess is the camera itself was taking photos of shorter exposure and the final image was composed in post-production, yes.

I am guessing, but I think it likely has to do with the shape and orientation of the satellite with respect to the sun and the camera. Depending on the relative positions, the brightness reflected off the satellite and reaching the camera will change over time.

I've taken long exposures using film (analog, so no stacking or any other funny business) and saw the same thing. I always thought they were planes but now it seems they may have been satellites. I'm curious if someone knows why this happens

I'm not aware of a digital camera that can take a 10 minute continuous exposure, but maybe there are special astronomy cameras that can?

Maybe, but also a lot of satellites rotate and so their brightness changes over time.

Passing clouds?

Add a black umbrella to each satellite: when they pass through the critical region where they are visible in the night sky while still being sunlit, pop the brollies up. We will fly them in the shade!

You could paint them black but they’d probably get quite hot.

If you blow up a satellite, half of it will end up going slower and half will go faster. The slower bits will probably burn up nicely, but the faster bits will just elevate their orbit.

I, a taxpayer, wish that we could significantly reduce light pollution so we could see the stars on a typical clear night.

Why gaze up at the vast cosmos when we can stare down at a little screen

How is it relevant that you're a taxpayer?

I , as a citicen, would like that research will figure out the origins of space and time

"As an American, I believe that my personal convenience outweigh the needs and desires of literally every other person on the entire planet"

Low earth orbit satellites orbit about once per 90 minutes, so in 10 minutes they go about 40 degrees across the sky. The comet is not even orbiting the earth, it's essentially fixed in the sky. The earth only rotates about 2.5 degrees in 10 minutes. So the satellites streak is 16 times longer than the comets.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Nachtfotografie/posts/264063... Here is the original photo description in German. See also my other comment in this thread. But the tl;dr is that this was a stack of 153 four-second exposures with some gaps in the timelime when the camera took its time to save between exposures.

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.

70% of all satellites are Starlink. So probably.

The idea of a Dyson sphere is that it's built around a star, in attempting to capture and utilize 100% of its energy output. So a shady shell around the Earth is not "the first stages" of a Dyson sphere, because our energy source is on the other side of the shell, and the orbits are completely different.

I do wonder if in 100 or 200 years if we do become interplanetary as a species, and technology advances if many of these satellites will just disappear from the night sky and it would be long since forgotten or if remembered only as a steppingstone towards an interplanetary future.

In the meantime, Starlink is the only thing that gives my sister in Puerto Rico access to the internet when the grid gets completely nerfed by a hurriance so she can tell us she's alright, well, that and landlines if she gets a power generator, otherwise, we're left to wonder how my sister and nephews are doing.

Not to play the musk’s advocate, but there is a case to be made that proving internet access in remote places is more valuable than a perfect night sky. If you live in the cities you can barely see the stars anyway, so you’re not missing much. But in an austere environment, connectivity can be the difference between life and death. It also lowers the bar, encouraging more people to visit wild places and make them more likely to support their protection in more meaningful ways.

It is obvious that the 9 million current customers are just the beginning of where SpaceX wants to take Starlink access. Easy to imagine Starlink serving 1 billion + customers in the near future.

How many hours are spent looking at the sky compared to Starlink usage?