Starlink Launch

upupup wrote: »

Hope it launches tomorrow as we have clear skies for thursday night/friday morning passes(thats if it is flying over ireland)

Scrubbed for to weather.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Amazon gets green-light to blow $10bn on 3,000+ internet satellites. All so Americans can shop more on Amazon

Higher than Starlink so 30? years for orbit to decay naturally rather than 1 year for Starlink

I wonder was the current global situation an influencing factor for their approval. Not that it will make much of a difference in heavily light polluted areas anyway but more of them will be even more of a nuisance for astronomy and astro-imaging on Earth.

Muahahaha wrote: »

What way are these satellites effecting astronomy and photography? Is it that the brightness of them is making other stuff invisible or something. And is the effect not just a for a moment as the satellite flys through at high speed?

The brightness wouldn't block out other stuff and if it did then there would be a bigger problem, anything that bright in the night sky would be causing the ground to light up also which would be a major environmental issue. Most but not all astrophotography requires you to stack many images together, if you have 3000 Amazon satellites to contend with (that number is just the start) and another 40,000 that SpaceX want to eventually send up then that is a lot of frames ruined and time wasted were you set out to capture a distant Galaxy, Nebula or Cluster.

They'll be orbiting in a grid which means that every x amount of seconds you will most likely capture/see one of these passing your field of view. When you are exposing for longer periods (say 5 minutes) you'll potentially have many of these things in those exposures. It will be kind of like going to a match where the stadium was built on train tracks and every 5 minutes a train passes through which interrupts play.

Muahahaha wrote: »

ah right thanks, hadnt realised astro photography means long exposures but that makes a lot of sense. Yeah I could see how that could be annoying running a five minute exposure and then you've satellites flying through the picture. I presume that when the image is stacked the satellites them come out as long streaks as they pass through the frame?

Also is Musks promise to paint them black going to make any difference to the problem or is it all just window dressing?

There was only a few sent up with the last batch of starlinks that had anti reflective coating on them. Remains to be seen (pun intended) but at least it is being recognised an issue.

https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/starlink-darksat

That's it exactly, usually when stacking images they are shorter exposures though so if any are in frame they'd look like dashed lines, stacking is also depended on the frame rate of video or in the case of taken images the pause between exposures. They would not be equally spread out dashes because the majority of the images taken could be discarded.

https://www.google.com/search?q=astro+images+with+starlinks+ruined&client=opera&hs=MLN&sxsrf=ALeKk02AGLvUF0Xz1kCQLzJoM_gKgQzZog:1596397465897&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjh2P_-o_3qAhWCZxUIHUefBPgQ_AUoAXoECGcQAw&biw=1537&bih=913

Starlink 9 launched this morning and it looks like clear skies for the pass tomorrow morning @4.All of the sats have visors now but may not be deployed straight away.https://www.heavens-above.com/StarlinkLaunchPasses.aspx?lat=52.4412&lng=-7.8748&loc=Unnamed&alt=0&tz=GMT

fryup wrote: »

is it still in view..in irish skies??

https://findstarlink.com/#744;3

Its looking good if the launch goes ahead on wednesday morning.Its passing Ireland 80 mins after launch and thursday morning too,possibly passing all weekend
https://www.heavens-above.com/StarlinkLaunchPasses.aspx?lat=52.4412&lng=-7.8748&loc=Unnamed&alt=0&tz=GMT

Thanks for the link.


I was able to clearly see the last lot a day after the previous launch on the 16th May as the typical train of lights in the sky. Think there was also a thread about it here at the time.

rameire wrote: »

Second stage should be flying above in around 10 minutes.
As for the starlink the recent launches have been visable recently as they are tightly packed together so very noticeboard.

I assume its not possible to see if its not dark outside yet?

rameire wrote: »

Its difficult. Very.
I think I have only ever seen one during daylight hours.

It is unusually clear here at the moment and I went out just in case but saw nothing. I have only every seen a launch of a shuttle over Ireland at night many years ago.

I didn't see them either, the Moon was far too bright and I could only make out the brightest stars/constellations.