Whereas radio astronomers are determining the influence of satellite tv for pc constellations on their work, optical astronomers are already monitoring satellite tv for pc streaks of their fields of view.

In mid-November, Cliff Johnson, an astronomer at Northwestern College, was monitoring the Chilean night time skies when he noticed a practice of 60 brilliant factors. It was SpaceX’s second batch of satellites, launched days earlier.

“It was simply unimaginable — watching one after the opposite after the opposite,” Dr. Johnson mentioned.

On the time, he was utilizing the Blanco 4-meter telescope on the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory to look at the outer edges of the Massive and Small Magellanic Clouds — two dwarf galaxies. Dr. Johnson suspected that when the satellites handed in entrance of the telescope, he may seize one or two of them. As a substitute, he counted 19. And SpaceX has since despatched 120 extra of the satellites into orbit.

“When you have tens of hundreds of satellites in orbit, that’s the kind of picture you’ll anticipate to have very, very incessantly,” mentioned Patrick Seitzer, a professor emeritus of astronomy on the College of Michigan.

The rising constellations may pose a major problem to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (previously identified as the Massive Synoptic Survey Telescope) — a 27-foot telescope beneath building in Chile that can scan your complete sky each three days. As a result of the telescope has such a large subject of view, it can extra simply decide up the brand new satellites and will lose important quantities of observing time, significantly close to nightfall and daybreak.

On the floor, OneWeb’s satellites may seem to pose a smaller downside than Starlink’s.

First, there will probably be fewer orbiters in OneWeb’s constellation. Additionally they orbit at a a lot larger distance from Earth. And they’re designed to be smaller with a tough floor that displays much less mild. These three traits make the satellites fainter than Starlink’s, and invisible to the bare eye. Meaning the satellites gained’t obscure your view of the cosmos throughout a tenting journey, as so many feared when Starlink was first deployed.

However any telescope will be capable of see them. As well as, their increased orbit poses a definite problem for big analysis telescopes just like the Rubin Observatory.