Years ago, stargazing parties in the countryside offered a breathtaking view of the night sky, the last piece of clean land not yet polluted by man.
Years ago, a stargazing party in the countryside offered a breathtaking view of the night sky, the last piece of clean water left untouched by man.
Unfortunately, things have changed.
Satellite companies are now scrambling to launch small satellites into low Earth orbit to provide network signals in remote areas. But these constellations of satellites form artificial “giant constellations” that are destroying the silent night sky.
For example, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has launched some 1,300 small satellites into space as part of its Starlink Internet service; and SpaceX has been given permission to launch 12,000 of them. Now, even in the darkest places on Earth, the night sky is polluted by the trajectories of these small satellites.
For the astronomical community, the problem is even more serious. According to a new paper recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, man-made space objects orbiting the Earth could increase the overall brightness of the night sky over much of the planet by more than 10 percent.
This would exceed the threshold set by astronomers 40 years ago, which determines whether a location is “light polluted.
Our main motivation is to estimate the potential impact of external factors (such as space objects in Earth orbit) on the brightness of the night sky,” Miroslav Kocifaj of Comenius University in Slovakia said in a statement. “
“We expected the increase in sky brightness to be negligible, but our first theoretical estimate has proved extremely surprising, so we decided to report our results in a timely manner.” The statement said.
The new study is the first to consider the overall impact of space objects on the night sky, while previous studies have mainly emphasized the impact of individual satellites and space debris on astronomical imaging. The research team modeled the contribution of space objects to the overall brightness of the night sky based on their known distribution of size and brightness pairs.
The study includes both functioning satellites and a variety of space debris. While specialized telescopes and sensitive cameras are able to resolve space objects into discrete points of light, low-resolution equipment and the human eye can only see the combined effect of many such objects.
The overall effect is to increase the diffuse brightness of the night sky, potentially obscuring diffuse astronomical objects, such as stellar clouds in the Milky Way.
“Unlike terrestrial light pollution, this light pollution can be seen over much of the Earth’s surface,” said John Barentine, director of Public Policy for the International Dark-Sky Association (IPDA). John Barentine, director of public policy for the International Dark-Sky Association, said in the statement. “Astronomers have built observatories away from city lights to look for dark skies, but this form of light pollution has a much larger geographic reach.”
In recent years, astronomers have expressed concern about the increasing number of objects orbiting the Earth, especially the large number of communications satellites.
To make matters worse, these small satellites increase the chances of collisions between satellites or between satellites and other objects, potentially creating more space debris.
In fact, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently presented a report on the effects of these satellites to a subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), along with some recommendations for mitigating the loss of the night sky.
This new study implies that further brightening of the night sky is proportional to the number of new satellites launched. Although SpaceX has recently changed its design to reduce the brightness of the spacecraft, the collective effect of the dramatic increase in the number of space objects will still change the global night sky.
“Our findings suggest that many more people than just astronomers are losing the opportunity to enjoy the pristine night sky,” Ballentine said. “This paper could really change the nature of the negotiations.” He said.
But the United Nations has been slow to move forward on the issue. The IAU’s recommendation to the UN simply says that satellite operators and the regulatory bodies that oversee them should consider the impact on astronomy and the night sky, and suggest some general guidelines. Then, if the subcommittee approves the report and its recommendations, it will hold a full COPUOS meeting in August, which may decide to forward the recommendations to the committee’s member states.
Ballentine told Vox: “It’s not really a policy agenda, but it’s a tone, like the world coming together, thinking about the issue, thinking it’s important, and coming up with a series of recommendations to minimize the problem.” It’s “the sense that we’ve identified the problem and come up with some solutions.”
Ballentine recognizes that the astronomy community has little influence.
The biggest issue at hand is that there are no international regulations regarding the appearance of satellites on Earth. In the aforementioned report, Ballentine said satellite companies such as SpaceX “have no legal obligation to listen to the concerns of astronomers. They are doing what they want to do. Another company in another country might have sent more and brighter satellites.
In a paper published in Nature Astronomy, physicists Aparna Venkatesan, James Lowenthal, Parvathy Prem and Monica Vidaurri write. “Satellite constellations … strike at the heart of humanity’s scientific and cultural relationship with the night sky, influencing thousands of years of sky traditions and cultural practices in all the countries that have surrounded the celestial bodies and the night sky for thousands of years.”
We really need to rethink our outer space strategy.
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