“a bright visitor passing through the inner Solar System. Now, the orbiting satellites themselves only appear as streaks because of the long camera exposure, over 10 minutes in this case. On the contrary, to the eye, satellites appear as points that drift slowly across the night sky and shine by reflecting sunlight – primarily just after sunset and before sunrise. The featured image was taken just before sunrise two weeks ago from Bavaria, Germany.”
I guess the only ways to access the natural sky is to leave the atmosphere or to use AI to remove the trails.
It’s not nearly as much of a problem as this image would suggest. The processing method used in this image was specifically chosen to highlight the satellite tracks. This method would have hidden them entirely.
Wouldn’t that have hidden the comet too?
Adding on to the other comment: the specific method I linked is a little crude, and intended to separate perfectly-still objects from all moving objects.
You can fine tune this technique to specifically capture or reject objects moving at certain rates. You could tune it to capture the slow rotation of the stars as the planet turns,for example, while rejecting the movement of the satellites.
Another example: The criss-crossing satellites are at different altitudes and travel at different speeds. You could fine tune this technique to selectively gate either set of satellites while rejecting the other set.
The point is that even though astrophotography is certainly degraded by these satellites, the degradation is not nearly as significant as this particular image would suggest. This image was synthesized by specifically targeting these satellites for inclusion, rather than exclusion.
No, the comet stays almosf stationary to the stars during such a short time. Hence, it is in every image and therefore also in the final median image.
For average astrophotography satellite trails are not really a problem as it may seem here. Almost any image is processed in such a way in any case. But there are special projects which are heavily impacted, for example the search for asteroids. There you need to look at each individual image, as fast moving asteroids would be deleted with this method.
Yeah I figured it was processed to show off the trails. I’m more wondering about the number of satellites in the picture. Like I said you’re out in a dark sky zone you can see them with the naked eye. Last time I was out you’d always see one or two flying by but this picture looks like a hundred or so in a 10 minute stretch. That’s a lot more than I would have guessed.
That seems about right. https://satellitemap.space/vis/constellation/starlink
According to the growth chart on that site there was ~3200 satellites up when I was out in 22. Now there’s 12K give or take 2k depending on the number you look at on the site. Kinda insane to see it visualized like that. It just seems unnecessary.
Terrestrial ISPs, (both wired and wireless) are broadly neglecting rural and impoverished areas. The people running ISPs are just as evil as Musk and Bezos, just not as well funded.
Services that directly compete with entrenched, monopolistic ISPs are absolutely necessary. I just wish they were run by humans instead of space nazis.