Starlink Satellites Tracker (opens in new tab)

By that time they'll also have a launch vehicle capable of launching around 300 satellites in a single launch.

Additionally, 42,000 was a worst case for the number needed and only if things go exceedingly well with the service. I think people quote that number too much when in reality there's likely to be under 5000 (from SpaceX at least).

Absolutely! Things will be really interesting when they can use Starships to launch batches. I've seen estimates that they could launch 600 starlink satellites at a time. They could theatrically also launch fewer, but put them all the way into their final orbit, skipping the few weeks of light pollution.

The current satellite version (VisorSat) has a magnitude of about 6, which is generally considered to be the limit of what is visible with the naked eye in a light-pollution free area.

Once you start using any optics they will be visible.

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2101/2101.00374.pdf#:~:te....

https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/what-is-stellar-ma...

I might sit down and do the math to see how 1500 satellites at mag 6 compares to 60 at mag 2.

> I think it's a bit early to dismiss the whole sky effect of multiple Starlink-style constellations in operation.

I wasn't trying to dismiss their effect, just address the people who say "you think those 60 are bad, imagine when there are 20,000", or "there go the Americans, ruining the night sky for the whole world".

I have no idea how oneweb or blue origin will handle this issue.

> Also isn't Starlink intending to do launches for the rest of time?

Their satellites are designed for a 5 year lifespan. Without constant boosts, they will deorbit and burn up fully in the atmosphere. This is great, because they will not become space junk, and they can't cause the dreaded kessler syndrome. The downside is that they will need to be constantly replenished. Hopefully this will be streamlined when they can launch 600 at a time, reducing the number of launches by a factor of 10.

There is also the (no help at the moment) fact that the more money that Starlink's parent company makes, the more likely we are to get the world's cheapest heavy lift orbital booster soon, and the more likely we are to soon have multiple large orbital telescopes that far exceed ground-based capabilities.

Basically, if SpaceX makes it, we'll probably have a Starship-launched lunar observatory quite soon, in the grand scheme of things.

This doesn't help the situation now, although there is so much screaming from the anti-Musk people as well as the pro-Musk people that it's hard to tell what the actual impact of the now-somewhat-albedo-mitigated starlink v.whatever satellites are. All of the coverage is breathless sky-is-falling stuff.

In any case, the situation is temporary. Either SpaceX makes it and we get a far side of Luna observatory and LEO/MEO telescopes besides, or they don't and in a few years Starlink all falls down and burns.

I'm reminded of Earth orbit from the film Wall-E for some reason.

I wondered about that but I wasn't able to see the Street View integration without it - I think you're right though - better without the past ones. Thank you.

Original author here, my fault.

I think it made more sense when there were less satellites, but this was a pretty common opinion from the start.

Original author here

When I originally created this it was so sparse that it was really easy to distinguish, now that would probably be a useful feature.

It's also just not that simple to implement. I threw this together really quickly, and the only data I am using is the orbit tracks, it doesn't include whether or not a satellite is on station yet.

You have 1337 karma. Sorry this is off topic.

Indeed those are super cool! I might go out to see one of those once the curfew is lifted here.

Flight path of an airport? No, we live about 20 miles west from the nearest airport. But any flights from there would go north, south, or east.

But it does not have the costs associated with building a tower in that area.

Though I have to admit, 4G/5G is never going to draw lines in the sky.

Unless they manage to shrink the satellite dish or mount it on the roof of the car (which would affect drag and make the cars look worse), it's so big that this it would seemingly only be possible on the Cybertruck (using bed space) or RVs.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1369051431903268865

And the end of privacy.

Awesome. I was going to get my son a telescope for this sort of thing.

The coolest satellite sighting I’ve had was when I was up on Mt. Hood a few summers ago and could see it really well. There was a meteor shower going on too.

Large mountains and infinite space are humbling in a good way.

That night was quite a journey. :-)

It's an extreme tangent and exaggerated by a million million times. That means it has no connection to the story at all.

Maybe I'm wrong to not find it funny, but I'm not a buzzkill in general, I just think this joke doesn't work and needs to be workshopped.

And if we did get up to the ridiculous scale to block even half a percent of sunlight I'm pretty sure that would actually be a good thing.

Rich people getting upset lol

While that's true, it's likely there's always going to be at least some trains that are visible even after full deployment as new satelites are launched to replace old ones

Starship will launch say 400 to LEO (rather than 60 as now), could it launch 100 to a higher orbit to reduce the impact? More starship launches (good for proving), and as the satelites deploy at a higher altitude they'll be darker

Even if they weren't, we can't have everything. Do you know how crippled a huge chunk of the world's population is without robust internet access? I have two telescopes in my house and I would give up looking at the sky forever if it meant my cousin's kids got to attend Zoom class instead of having to work from take-home materials.

That depends on how dark the area is. I heard that in a Bortle 5 or lower area they are naked eye visible, which really sucks for stargazers. Especially since some of the more interesting naked eye observations have to be done using peripheral vision.

It's introducing a fuck ton of low orbit debris that is already interfering with astronomical research. Satellites that fail or break are stuck up there.

Think about it - when Starlink is fully operational there won't be a single place left on earth without several of their satellites always in view. The same definitely cannot be said about planes. Also countries retain full sovereignty to decide whether to allow planes flying above them - same cannot be said about satellites. Countries which cannot even use Starlink are having their night sky polluted by it.

Starlink is polluting the sky for people who cannot buy its services, and who don't appreciate yet another American corporation invading into their lives, this time taking the very view of the night sky.

Exactly. Some friends of mine are taking of going out of town so they can see a starlink train in a nice dark(er) sky.

All of my comments on this topic are in massive negative numbers right now - I'm surprised HN is so protective of any criticism towards Starlink. Obviously I see the positive sides of it, for sure, but it's just weird to me that an American company does something that will affect every single person on the globe, in literally every corner of the Earth, and no one here goes "hang on, maybe.... don't?". Yeah internet is important but it's not like there aren't other solutions to this. And yes someone will reply immediately saying that they live 400 miles from the nearest town on top of a rock and they really can't get internet any other way. Like, ok, cool, but maybe putting 42k satellites into orbit to get you internet really isn't worth it to the 8 billion people on the planet.