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Starlink is increasingly interfering with astronomy, scientists say
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this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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Astronomy
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So basically, at least during the rest of this decade, our billion dollar telescopes, radio and optical, are blind on different frequencies or are only able to obtain diffuse resolution.
As technology advances, our ability to observe the universe from space far surpasses ground-based telescopes. While I appreciate amateur astronomy, let's acknowledge that satellites like those in low Earth orbit can occasionally interfere with surface observations. Instead of criticizing their presence, perhaps we could focus on working together to minimize disruptions and support continued space exploration – after all, observatories like JWST are pushing the boundaries of our understanding.
This is an insane take. “While I appreciate amateur astronomy” - my dude, it’s not amateurs being affected here. You want to let a small number of tools become the only way humanity has to make these kinds of observations? You think the tools up there can somehow be made to equal the capacity and accommodate the man hours required to do the science we do?
You’re out of your mind.
The tools “up there” could be made to rival the capacity and accommodate the man hours required to more science than we do now. The problem is it’s hard and expensive and nobody wants to try because of that fact. It’s becoming easier with cheaper launch vehicles and better communications infrastructure. Now we need folks to start identifying the best locations to send new observation satellites and then start building and launching them.
Your take is very conservative and counter to technological progress and I don’t appreciate the personal attack. We can have a meaningful conversation without that crap.
Don't forget important discoveries are also made by or with the help of amateurs, who permanently observe the night sky and measure the coordinates, i.e. the relative positions, of luminating objects. This allows others, mostly professionals, to calculate their motions and obtain information about the (hidden) masses, i.e. luminating and non luminating objects, inducing and influencing them. By this means, black holes, 'dark' masses, or asteroids, 'fast' moving illuminated objects, have been and are beeing discovered.
Discoveries about and observations of comets, supernovae, even exoplanet transits are regularly being enriched or even driven in some cases by “amateur” astronomers.
This guy’s legit out of his mind or he’s been huffing Elon’s musk.
Suggesting that we move towards space-based astronomy doesn't mean he's out of his mind. He might not be a professional astronomer or astrophysicist, but that hardly indicates insanity.
They had an opinion and expressed it. You can then reply and explain why you disagree. No need to call them insane for expressing their thoughts.
Considering their instance, I'd assume they're more out of their mind than huffing Elmo.
Another important part in this argumentation is that each type of telescope has its use case:
Extraterrestrial telescopes, as they are not objected by atmospheric blur can obtain much better 'images' from the cosmos even of weak, low brightness signals, which makes them best for observing the 'far' cosmos until the boundaries of recognition.
Yet, they are and always will be much more expensive and more difficult to maintain than terrestrial telescopes. Thus, using them for observing our cosmic front yard, the milky way, is like shooting with canons at sparrows.
Due to their cost, extraterrestrial telescopes also will always be 'few', too few to effectively keep track of the objects around us. Thus, 'cheap' terrestrial telescopes, large professional ones and small ones run by amateurs, will always be needed to observe the objects 'closely' around us, i.e. in our galaxis.
Yes, extraterrestrial telescopes are hard. And, we need more of them. And we need to give access to amateurs.
You would be hard pushed to build something like the SKA in space given it spans multiple countries and a significant arc of the earth.
Imagine one orbiting each planet and what we can observe.
I can imagine it but it certainly won't be practical to implement in our lifetimes. There are certainly some observatories that benefit from being based in space (optical and infrared) and even gravitational detectors such as laser interferometers. However aside from the wide capture area radio telescopes need large amounts of compute to separate the signal from the noise. The amount of data that needs to be processed makes space based radio observatories very hard to implement.
Maybe the dark side of the moon will make a decent observatory one day but we haven't set foot on the place for decades, let alone built anything so complex.