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A comment on Study: ultra-black coating could reduce satellite light pollution.

Re:Study: ultra-black coating could reduce satellite light p... by rose-knuckle17 on Monday July 06, 2026 @09:42AM (#48804458)
Sounds like what my eye doc says when he busts the laser out for medical work on my eye. His work creates blank spots in my FOV. Not noticeable at all walking around, but they make detail vision difficult. Everything from artistic project work to seeing the center dot on screen in a shooter, and it makes refractory vision checks to figure out my Rx near impossible. The letters in the eyechart just disappear unless can catch them peripherally.

Making blank spots in the sky between the observer and the observed is something I suspect won't really be an improvement. It likely to make the problem less noticable (eg. no more b-roll of streaks in the sky to upset people) and, probably, more of a challenge to mitigate.

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Re:Study: ultra-black coating could reduce satellite light p... by Plankaluel on Monday July 06, 2026 @09:52AM (#48804601)
I don't think this is comparable. One is generally taking long-time exposures for astronomy pictures (hence the streaks).

So if the satellite is simply blocking light, in the worst case, it will block the light of a star, maybe for a few milliseconds(?) dimming the star in the final picture by a minuscule amount.

This might still be problematic (influencing spectroscopy? dimming the star slightly, influencing some measurements there?) but probably still better than potentially mixing in light from a difference source (?)

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Re:Study: ultra-black coating could reduce satellite light p... by iririririr on Monday July 06, 2026 @10:00AM (#48804712)
astronomy today point to a small piece in the sky to measure some binary star that is barely one pixel on the sensor. now you covered it with a black satellite right when then unique event was about to happen... did it not happen or was hidden by a new satellite?

also, black coating is old news. very old news. and musk said he didn't consider for starlink because he doesn't have to pay for something that doesn't make money directly for himself. so this whole discussion is pointless.

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