The orbits are known and predictable, could they be fed into a sort of dynamic coronagraph that occludes the glares of the satellites while they move through the field of view of a telescope?
For serious astronomy this isn't viable, and for amateurs this really puts a dent in the magic and sanctity the night sky as we've known it throughout the entire history of our species. If only we could add "the night sky" to UNESCO's world heritage lists.
Yes, there are a lots of ways to solve this problem. A lot of the complaining and hand wringing around this feels kind of like "oh man, finally my niche hobby can get a bite of the outrage economy!".
> "Obviously not everyone can pick up and relocate to the woods to experience the unobscured beauty of the sky. But there still are, for now, places where you’d expect not to see artificial stars passing overhead."
Well the writer may expect it, but it hasn't really existed for a long time.
If Starlink enables me to live somewhere like the western states or the great north woods and still work remotely and stay connected with the world then this is a tradeoff I'm more than willing to accept.
That's great for you. What about those who aren't willing to accept that tradeoff? It seems there's literally no action we can take besides voicing our concerns on fora like this.
I'm deeply concerned about the ramifications of Starlink and the precedents it sets for further sky pollution. For all of mankind's history we've been able to look to the skies for guidance, inspiration, knowledge and truth. Space objects have guided our understanding of the universe and our place within it. It's absolutely criminal that in a span of a few years this might be obstructed by the goals of one or several corporations, under the veil of improving global internet connectivity. It's doubtful whether accomplishing that goal will bring world prosperity or simply make SpaceX and Musk the biggest beneficiaries.
Whether this benefit will fuel further space exploration and the commercialization of space travel is also irrelevant at this point in time. There's no practical reason for humanity to reach Mars in the immediate future as Musk has proposed. We have far bigger problems on Earth today that won't get solved by simply throwing technology at it, yet solving them would bring more benefits to humanity than having internet access in remote parts of the world. Practical problems like famine, clean water supplies, diseases, pollution, climate change, political corruption and wars seem much more important than being able to access Facebook from a mountain in Siberia.
While there's no reason we couldn't work on all of those concurrently, and global internet access would certainly help in that process, there's been no global discussion on whether a system of satellites this disruptive is what the entire world actually wants. Governments will certainly benefit from improved surveillance capabilities and we'll have more trillion dollar corporations and billionaires, but these aren't global goals.
Apologies for the rantiness of this, I'm not sure I can put my feeling of dread properly into words. And don't get me started on Neuralink, another rushed Musk venture we need to address as a species and civilization...
This is an example of an externality. Externalities are historically extremely hard to address.
If you think of starlink sattelites being visible as a form of pollution, light pollution I suppose in this case, then it makes sense why the economics aren't priced in and there's little that can be done by a minority of this impacted.
Via Wikipedia: "The Moon has an exceptionally low albedo, giving it a reflectance that is slightly brighter than that of worn asphalt." Yet, the sun is /so bright/ that even at 380,000km we see moon-shadows at night on earth.
To a first approximation, small LEO satellites are roughly the same angular size as Venus at its average distance to us.
If SpaceX's (et al) plans come to fruition, I say just give it a decade or two and start planning to send up a load of telescopes in 'Starships' or whatever they'll have then.
I'm a big astronomy fan, but I'd take the [not impossibly large from my perspective] hit in the short term where observations are concerned. In that short-term, I don't think it's an insurmountable problem anyway.
- ed
as an aside, this was posted on The Register earlier today