from Hacker News

The Night Sky Will Never Be the Same

by sunnyP on 2/6/20, 3:06 PM with 11 comments

• by _Microft on 2/6/20, 5:44 PM

  The orbits are known and predictable, could they be fed into a sort of dynamic coronagraph that occludes the glares of the satellites while they move through the field of view of a telescope?

• by look_lookatme on 2/6/20, 5:14 PM

  > "Obviously not everyone can pick up and relocate to the woods to experience the unobscured beauty of the sky. But there still are, for now, places where you’d expect not to see artificial stars passing overhead."

  Well the writer may expect it, but it hasn't really existed for a long time.

  If Starlink enables me to live somewhere like the western states or the great north woods and still work remotely and stay connected with the world then this is a tradeoff I'm more than willing to accept.

• by eleitl on 2/6/20, 4:25 PM

  SpaceX is trialing a new absorbent coating on the new launches https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-astronomy-p...

• by detritus on 2/6/20, 6:55 PM

  If SpaceX's (et al) plans come to fruition, I say just give it a decade or two and start planning to send up a load of telescopes in 'Starships' or whatever they'll have then.

  I'm a big astronomy fan, but I'd take the [not impossibly large from my perspective] hit in the short term where observations are concerned. In that short-term, I don't think it's an insurmountable problem anyway.

  - ed

  as an aside, this was posted on The Register earlier today

  https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/06/space_comms_revolut...