An image of the Australian desert illuminates satellite pollution

As someone who co-incidentally started dabbling in Astrophotography as a hobby in early 2019 before Starlink launched, back then you literally could capture a single 20-second exposure (on a very wide lens, so no obvious star trail&#x2F;blur at that focal length due to the Earth&#x27;s rotation), and get images with no satellites.<p>Now (and even in 2021 it was getting hard to do that) it&#x27;s impossible to do that, even with 10 second exposures.<p>What&#x27;s needed now is multiple exposures, and merging&#x2F;integrating them in something like Siril (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;siril.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;siril.org&#x2F;</a>) to remove the obvious satellite trails.<p>However, arguably, integrating multiple exposures, while annoying and time-consuming workflow-wise (i.e. can&#x27;t <i>just</i> look at images directly from camera, and currently need to convert to TIFF first) is often the better way to get slightly-less-noisy images anyway, and integrate effectively longer exposures without star-trails, so it&#x27;s a tricky one.

At no point does the article enlighten me of the actual ‘problem’. The photo is beautiful. The ability to even capture this signifies technological advancement, which I think wonderful.<p>In some way this reminds me of living in SF back in 2015, and all the arguments over the towers going up in soma. “No one wants the Manhattanization of the city” was accepted fact on both sides. Yet that wasn’t an obvious fact to me at all, and I could never find an argument in support of this ‘fact’.<p>Can someone enlighten me here?

The clear grid patterns are really fantastic. (I realise that it&#x27;s bad and all that - but still, those grids are amazing to see)

&quot;Stitching together 343 distinct photos,&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t doubt that this is a real problem for astronomers and photographers, but I feel like if you had to work that hard, it doesn&#x27;t really make your case.

You know those airplanes with a banner at the beach?<p>I can imagine a constellation of satellites writing ads (live) in space using mirrors and other nifty tech.<p>Unless regulation stops it.

I wonder what uncontacted tribes think about starlink

I’d be more concerned about the light pollution from the city (Perth?) on the horizon.

&gt; Rozells’ composite visually echoes pleas from astronomers, who warn that although satellites collect essential data, the staggering amount filling our skies will only worsen light pollution and our ability to study what lies beyond. Because this industry has little regulation, the problem could go unchecked.<p>We have the technology to put observatories in orbit, where satellite &quot;pollution&quot;, light pollution, atmospheric effects, etc. all become significantly less problematic. Maybe that should be our focus, rather than on shaming satellite constellations for doing essential work?

Article with misleading conclusions.<p>Image is stacked from multiple images during sunset&#x2F;sunrise when satellites are most visible because of sun position to observer. Photographer is in dark while satellites are lighted by direct sunlight.<p>During night, its barely visible.

Just paint the satellites black?

You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. The benefits of satellites seem worth the cost, at least in the foreseeable future.

It is so polluted you need professional camera gear and processing of hundreds of photos together in order to show it. Get real. Internet access for poor, remote rural areas across the global is more important than convenient timelapse photography.

A startup idea: launch satellites to capture clean night sky photos, with tiered subscription model of course.