Re:Starlink satellites hindering detection of near-Earth ast...
by tzs on Friday January 21, 2022 @03:46PM
(#30029761)
> The downsides are extremely minor. Nobody ever complains about jets polluting our night skies (as opposed to our atmosphere, which they do of course do bad things to).
Starlink's constellation will have 12000 satellites when fully deployed. There are between 8000 and 20000 jets in the air at any given time, so you might expect jets and satellites to be roughly equally present in any given person's sky.
But wait...satellites generally are higher up than jets, so a given satellite will be visible to a larger area than a jet will.
If the Starlink satellites were in orbits that covered all of the Earth equally then when the full constellation is deployed there would be about 360 visible from any give point on the surface at any given time. I believe they aren't using any orbits that cover the far north and south, so the actual number visible for most places should be a bit higher, but lets stick with 360 as a lower bound.
That's way more than the number of jets visible at any one place.
Starlink's constellation will have 12000 satellites when fully deployed. There are between 8000 and 20000 jets in the air at any given time, so you might expect jets and satellites to be roughly equally present in any given person's sky.
But wait...satellites generally are higher up than jets, so a given satellite will be visible to a larger area than a jet will.
If the Starlink satellites were in orbits that covered all of the Earth equally then when the full constellation is deployed there would be about 360 visible from any give point on the surface at any given time. I believe they aren't using any orbits that cover the far north and south, so the actual number visible for most places should be a bit higher, but lets stick with 360 as a lower bound.
That's way more than the number of jets visible at any one place.