Saying this in light of:
- how many satellites are in orbit - this chart showing the change over recent years: https://astrodon.social/@Astromeg/111164811749991554
- this thread a while back speculating about starlink: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1563158073694310401.html
With prosumer telescopes, images are stacked from dozens, if not hundreds of relatively short exposures - it's trivial to discard the images which were photobombed by a satellite.
I feel sorry and I understand the feeling, but if we are to be a space faring civilization (and we really should), there will be lots of things flying in LEO all the time, and many of those much bigger - and brighter - than these. Companies can try to mitigate that somehow (flat surfaces, materials with less diffuse reflections etc...) but we'd better be prepared for that.
I can't wait to see IR observatories in the lunar poles, radiotelescopes on the far side, and visible-light ones anywhere else, where astronomers could live nearby and maintain their structures. And, with 1/6 of Earth's gravity, it'll be easier to build larger reflectors.
The time for that was centuries ago.
Try naked eye, changes are you'll find the north star if at all. Simple light pollution already makes this really hard.
Mitigation strategies might be needed, such as changing the scanning strategy. Masking out the point sources effectively reduces sensitivity, effectively losing money in the sense that they are either going to miss the target from initial funding, or need to ask for more funding.
In short, all astronomers are affected, the more expensive programs are likely affected most as they often are targeting higher sensitivity (hence it will be sensitive to even small amount of contamination) and/or large fraction of the sky (hence it is impossible to avoid scanning across any of them).
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=571785082&q=starlink+a...
The satellites reflect a significant amount of sunlight. It's many, many times worse than existing satellites and lights from airplane traffic and more difficult to remove the tracks, plus whatever was hidden behind the reflecting satellite is lost.
Things are even worse for radio astronomy, because apparently the starlink satellites emit significant RF pollution: https://www.space.com/starlink-electronics-hum-disturbs-radi...
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2023/08/aa46374-...
The interference apparently varies satellite to satellite in both intensity and band, and exists in a very wide range of frequencies, including those protected for scientific observation by the ITU.
It's infuriating that one man has so significantly impacted nearly an entire field of science.
Radio looks pretty bleak, noise floor is about to get a lot higher.