I'd rather see some regulations against all the lights in the Walmart/shopping mall/grocery store parking lots which have completely ruined the night sky in my area.
I'd rather see some regulations against all the lights in the Walmart/shopping mall/grocery store parking lots which have completely ruined the night sky in my area.
It's also a global problem.
Regardless, we should be moving our telescopes to space. Much less interference of all kinds.
You also can't slew a telescope in space like you can on ground, it would be extremely cost prohibitive in terms of fuel.
"moving telescopes to space" is the equivalent of "let them eat cake" comment in this funding environment. It sounds like a wonderful proposition until you realize how many observatories we have on the ground and their utilization and how expensive it would be to replicate half that utilization. It's already not easy getting time on a telescope, if everybody had to be crammed on 15 space observatories costing $1B/each, there would be no observational time for grad students or post docs let alone funding for research. You also kill follow up observations on temporal events.
Of course, maybe the government could reach an agreement with SpaceX to send up the observatories for free and send some money the way of the astronomers for seriously messing up the sky, but there's no reason to expect SpaceX to be a good citizen of the night sky.
Seems like they are willing to do more than most:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1132908915144794113
You can use reaction wheels instead for zero fuel use.
I watched a recent pass of the Starlink satellites, and now that they're oriented near their operational directions, I could barely see them. I only noticed them because I knew right where to look. Unlike the flashing lights of passing aircraft which were a lot more distracting.
SpaceX satellites are much closer and they are planning something around 7,500 of them.
Might not be too hard to look in just the right place with that many floating around.
ISS is also sometimes reported as a UFO. It's often brighter than Venus.