“Losing the Sky” event this evening

[Mark Phillips]

You may have seen this advertised already and Prof. Catherine Heymans was on Radio 4 this morning publicising it, but this important event is happening this evening. It’s free and you can watch in live on YouTube from 7:30pm BST

Live public discussion with Andy Lawrence, Brian Eno, Catherine Heymans, Mark McCaughrean from ESA, Amy Mehlman from Viasat, and many others.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/155652112659

Or just go to YouTube directly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESoM3Noz5zk

We’ve managed to get together an amazing group of people to talk about this disturbing subject.

Mark

[Dominic Ford]

I would add that Andy Lawrence’s book of the same title is also well worth a read: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Losing-Sky-Andy-Lawrence-ebook/dp/B08W9NR7DX

It’s the best in-depth technical account I’ve seen of what Starlink’s motivations are, how much of a problem it is, and why international regulation doesn’t work.

[Paul Anthony Brierley]

SpaceX and others- appear to have a disregard for the impact on Astronomical research when they continually pollute our skies.

I have seen too many Astro-images that have been captured by the Amature- Astronomical community. Ruined because of these satellites. 

[Daryl Dobbs]

I’ve heard that some of Space x satellites leak into frequencies used by radio astronomy.

Since March I’ve been following with interest V1405 Cas, I can’t remember a session observing with my binoculars that a satellite didn’t cross my field of view. They are certainly a pest

[Nick James]

Daryl – There are certainly a lot more trails on my images this summer compared to previous years. For imagers the way that you stack subframes can help to a certain extent. The animated GIF attached is the same frame stacked as average and as sigma clip. There are 5 satellite trails on this image, two bright ones and three faint. The sigma clip stack definitely suppresses the bright ones. Photometrically the two stacks are the same. 

[Daryl Dobbs]

Interesting clip, alas with oneweb Starlink etc the problem will get worse, I wonder how professional observatories cope to protect the sensors of their instruments  

[Author]

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