Andromeda Galaxy, streaked
A Starlink satellite streaked across this image of the Andromeda Galaxy, taken by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) during twilight on May 19, 2021. The image shows only one-sixteenth of ZTF's full field of view.

A new study of Starlink satellites’ impact on astronomy gives the community cause for both relief and concern.

SpaceX’s Starlink is a network of satellites designed to provide broadband internet to remote areas. The company has 1,848 working satellites currently in orbit, most of them about 500 kilometers (310 miles) above the ground, but it has applied to fly 40,000 more. And that’s just Starlink — other companies such as Amazon’s Kuiper, UK’s OneWeb, and China’s Guowang are applying to send tens of thousands more satellites to an increasingly crowded low-Earth orbit.

That growing crowd has the potential to seriously affect astronomy, not to mention space. Now, astronomers working with the Zwicky Transient Facility, a telescope and camera set up to scan the entire Northern Hemisphere sky every two days, have examined images taken between November 2019 and September 2021, looking for the telltale streak of a Starlink satellite crossing the field of view. They’ve published their results in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Thousands of Trails

First the bad (though unsurprising) news: The number of satellite trails found in astronomical images, particularly during twilight hours, is escalating. “In 2019, 0.5% of twilight images were affected, and now almost 20% are affected,” says study lead Przemek Mróz (University of Warsaw, Poland). Eventually, as the Starlink constellation grows, nearly all twilight images will contain a Starlink trail, the team predicts.

Taking images during twilight is particularly important for studies of potentially hazardous objects, whose orbits cross Earth’s — a specialty of the Zwicky Transient Facility. Asteroids and comets near or approaching Earth will also be near the Sun in the sky, so twilight imaging is essential if we are to find and track them.

Also, while Starlink satellites are at low orbits and thus affect only twilight images, other constellations can (and will) go to higher altitudes. OneWeb, which is already operating 394 satellites (out of 6,372 planned) at 1,200 km, will affect images taken later at night, during what should be true darkness.

Satellites launched, images impacted
This plot shows the number of satellites deployed and the number of ZTF images impacted over time.
Mróz et al. / Astrophysical Journal Letters

“The value of a careful analysis of observational data is that it provides ground truth for the modeling predictions on which the policy concerns have been based,” says Richard Green (University of Arizona), who has helped organize the astronomy community’s dialog with the satellite industry. “They paid particular attention to the kinds of observations that are most relevant to the search for potentially hazardous asteroids, which is a Congressional charge to NASA and a specific concern of the United Nations’ Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS).”

Science Not Affected (Yet)

There’s also good news: Despite the large and increasing number of satellite streaks, it’s not affecting ZTF science.

That’s because — unlike some other observatories — single satellite trails are faint enough that they don’t saturate the ZTF detector. That means that the automatic pipeline, which already removes airplane trails and the like, can easily mask a satellite streaking across an image. So while a few pixels are lost (about 0.04% of the detector area), the image as a whole is still useful.

“We estimate that once SpaceX deploys the entire constellation of 42,000 satellites, every ZTF image taken during twilight would be contaminated with about four satellite streaks,” says Mróz, “which means that about 0.2% of all pixels would be lost (and so there is a 0.2% chance that ZTF may miss a transient during twilight).” Even then, because ZTF re-images the entire sky every two days, they’d still likely pick up whatever they missed.

A key aspect to this has been SpaceX itself working to decrease the brightness of its satellites. Their new “VisorSat” model, which uses a shield to block reflected sunlight, is on average 4.6 times fainter than the original model. But it’s still not quite at the 7th-magnitude level that a congress of astronomers and industry professionals, known as SATCON, has recommended for satellites at 500 km up.

VisorSat
Artist's conception of VisorSat, where a Starlink satellite will be equipped with a deployable visor that shades the antennas from sunlight. The visor will be transparent to radio frequencies.
SpaceX

The community has chosen that limit because that’s the brightness that will saturate ultra-sensitive wide-field detectors, such as the one to be installed at the Vera Rubin Observatory. At the moment, most Starlink satellites would breach the 7th-magnitude limit, overwhelm the detector, and create “ghost trails.” There’s no easy way to mask satellite trails, as ZTF has done, if the trails themselves echo across an image.

“Industry’s best efforts to date haven’t reached the target that lowers the impact on astronomical data to the needed level,” Green says. “How to codify the current good intentions, or to continue to provide positive incentive for industry’s cooperation in meeting the technical challenges, remains a challenge.”

Impacts on Sky, Space, and Earth

While the new study focused on the satellites’ impact on professional astronomy, concerns remain in other arenas. Not least of these is simple stargazing; on the current course, one team of astronomers has predicted that one of every 15 lights future observers will see in the sky will be a satellite.

There’s also space-traffic control: The growing number of satellites in low-Earth orbit, particularly below 600 km, is causing increasing numbers of near-misses between satellites and even space stations. The increase appears to be linear with time (ignoring Starlink passes near other Starlinks), according to tweets from Hugh Lewis (University of Southampton, UK). China has even filed an official complaint with the United Nations’ COPUOS, noting two near misses between Starlink satellites and its Tianhe space station (which had crew aboard at the time).

Layer cake atmosphere
Satellites and meteors alike burn up in the mesosphere, an upper stratum of Earth's multi-layered atmosphere.
Wikipedia / CC BY-SA 3.0

Another concern is the satellites’ impact on Earth itself. Satellites that reenter our atmosphere burn up, eliminating them as space debris. But in the process, they deposit metals in the upper atmospheric layers. “Mass doesn’t just vanish,” said Aaron Boley (University of British Columbia, Canada) at the UN’s conference on Dark and Quiet Skies in October; his research appears in Scientific Reports.

Meteors burn up in the atmosphere, too, but Boley notes that with enough space activity, humans could become the dominant source of metals in the upper layers, which could have unintended consequences.

“That’s not to say we can’t access and use space,” he said, “but we have to understand the implications.”


Tags

Starlink

Comments


Image of Rod

Rod

January 25, 2022 at 7:34 pm

A good report and thanks. On 03-Dec-2021 I was out observing comet Leonard passing near M3 and a Starlink passed by. [Observed 0500-0600 EST/1000-1100 UT. Sunrise 0708 EST/1208 UT....Using my 90-mm refractor telescope and 32-mm plossl eyepiece at 31x, theskylive.com magnitude looks accurate for the comet reported as 7.4. A diffuse coma near 9 arcminute angular size for the comet and M3 distinctly brighter in the FOV. True FOV ~ 96-arcminutes at 31x. Starry Night and Stellarium show about 47 arcminute angular separation between M3 and comet Leonard this morning near 0530 EST/1030 UT. While observing a Starlink satellite passed by the eyepiece FOV perhaps 4th magnitude, nearly between M3 and comet Leonard in their positions in the sky. Stellarium showed Starlink satellites passing by Canes Venatici and Bootes this morning before sunrise. In Leo, a meteor flashed and burned up, leaving a smoke train or trail that I could see using 10x50 binoculars easily.]

My stargazing log records now a number of Starlink satellites passing by and this seems to be more common as the days go by or perhaps as the nights go by when I am using my telescopes 🙂

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Alain Maury

Alain Maury

January 26, 2022 at 2:54 pm

The "yet" in the title of the article is indeed the problem. Look for example at this time lapse of comet swan : https://vimeo.com/user9737705 and try to imagine ten times more satellites passing by. It's already a big mess. But the bigger mess will be when they will be collisions between out of control satellites. If it occurs at a higher altitude, these debris will end up going down progressively and break down the other satellites in lower orbits. The problem will solve alone by itself. Satellite debris will be all much fainter than magnitude 7 :). At least if the various countries could get together and launch only one network of satellites, instead of letting any crazy billionaire pollute space on its own. It should be an international program.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Tom-Harnish

Tom-Harnish

January 27, 2022 at 11:56 am

As contrast to Rod's observations, over the last week I've collected more than 24 hours of two-minute sub-exposures of IC805. In all those frames I've captured two aircraft and zero satellites using a 120mm refractor and cooled astro camera

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of John-Murrell

John-Murrell

January 28, 2022 at 4:44 pm

Were these taken in twilight ? Most of the night Starlink satellites are in the Earth's shadow and are not nearly as bright.

The new higher orbit satellites will be illuminated for more of the astronomical darkness time and will shine all night at higher latitudes

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of John-Murrell

John-Murrell

January 28, 2022 at 4:47 pm

The Starlink satellites are very bright when they are being de-orbited - approaching the brightness of the ISS. I assume that at launch they fly in the so called Shark fin configuration to reduce reflection and when they are de-orbiting they are in the normal operational orientation but being lower are a lot brighter.

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Image of Anthony-Mallama

Anthony-Mallama

January 29, 2022 at 8:08 am

In this paper the VisorSat model of Starlink was found to be fainter than the original design by an average of 1.67 magnitudes in the Sloan g, r and i bands. This value is larger than the 1.32 magnitude difference reported by me (arXiv:2111.09735) in the Johnson V band, and likewise for the 1.0 magnitude difference measured in V by Krantz et al. (arXiv:2110.10578).

You must be logged in to post a comment.

You must be logged in to post a comment.