> and are extremely easy to remove with the most basic of outlier rejection techniques; netizens often amplifiy outliers by max-stacking instead of outlier-rejected mean-stacking to make Starlink look much worse than it is
my understanding was that they are a problem on much bigger scale than yours "one dude with mobile telescope (or maybe just a camera?)"
sure, we don't have many film observatories anymore (where max-stacking is literally only thing they can do), but a lot of lower-to-medium scale observatories get polluted observations with not enough funding to clean up easily or too small FoV for cleanup to matter - frame gets ruined, observation needs to be longer for effect
Or more generally, let's say 10% of frames have satellite noise. That means there is 10% less observing you can do in a night. For amateurs, that is annoying. For professionals, that means less science can be done.
2. If you are doing photometry (measuring the brightness of something), even if the relative brightness isn't very much, it can introduce a lot of noise to the data. For many things, even the dimmest satellite is going to add more light than the change in brightness you are looking for.
Now to be fair for scientific research typically you can use the frame if the streak isn't too close to your object(s) of interest. And for pretty pictures you can often edit out the streaks. But even so, it's a problem more than you would think.
It's too much
There’s certainly more of them than there used to be, but the satellites aren’t bright enough to affect your eyes or distract too much from the stars. If you do see one it’s a fun little exercise to try and figure out what it is!
Ground-based light sources are the real threat to night skies.
Starlink gets a lot of attention because it's new, and because it's run by a polarizing guy who sucks.
Meanwhile, the airplane and streetlight situation has been destroying night sky photography for decades, to the point where photographers consult charts and have communities tracking the best times of years to minimize the hours of driving you have to do.
But let's "both are real issues" it, sure.
It still won't be as big of an issue for night sky photography, for reasons mentioned in the parent comment.
However, there are many other severe issues, of course. But for hobbyist and professional photography? Mitigable.
I can see a problem with 100x the current deployment, but the "other severe issues" kick in long before that, anyways.
(2) The standards for astrophotography and for professional astronomical measurements are somewhat different! Also, I think you meant median stacking; mean stacking doesn't handle outliers as well.
(3) Whataboutism. Besides, you'd get no argument from me about replacing the majority of air travel with high speed rail, even without considering lights.
I agree that city light pollution is probably the bigger problem, especially for the amateur/cultural angle, but these are two symptoms of the general cause of our economic system not valuing the sky (or the environment generally).
> replacing the majority of air travel with high speed rail
I absolutely LOVE high speed rail, but I will note that it is correlated with far more light pollution than air traffic. I say correlated because typically high speed rail is routed through high-density population centers, but if there aren't population centers, you'll have to have plans to create them in order to support the rail system itself.
Basically there is nowhere in the world that has both high speed rail AND suitable for astronomy. If you want to find dark skies in China for example you have to get far away from all the high speed rail areas of the country.
Rail travel has stops and slowdowns in more populated areas that make it a bit slower than the advertised top speeds.
My point was that if you want replace, say, San Francisco <-> Las Vegas with HSR you're going to inevitably have to wreck a chunk of Bortle 1 dark skies in the Sierra or Death Valley.
Doesn't mean I'm against HSR but it has to be done thoughtfully.
This is such a misanthropic point of view.
Nobody "creates" population centers. People aren't created out of raw clay, they already exist.
If population centers are "created" it's because people already exist and want to live in a specific place, often time urban.
And if they wouldn't go to these population centers they wouldn't live in caves in the dark. They would be spread over many more places, yes, creating lower levels of light pollution but lots more of them, covering a lot more land.
All you're describing is population redistribution, not population creation. Urban centers have very low fertility rates, which actually reduces populations...
People don't live in caves, they will create light pollution everywhere, anyway. Might as well put them in small and dense population centers.
I hate reading comprehension these days :-)
That's demonstrably false, population centers are created all the time. The fact that populations don't spontaneously appear is irrelevant.
Again, reading comprehension, context, and I guess, typical techie obtuseness.