Starlink Signal Leakage Threatens Radio Astronomy's Most Critical Frequencies
(www.gadgetreview.com)
While I pine for a dark sky, it makes sense that these operations should move in the same way century old optical telescopes in cities are no longer used for cutting edge science.
replyThe far side of the moon seems like an increasingly viable option.
> Algorithmic mitigation is being explored, but scientists describe it as “embryonic” — potentially demanding computing power that rivals the science processing itself.
replyIt sounds like this would work? Just be more costly, at least in the short term.
> Engineering fixes are the real answer
What is the fix and tradeoff? The article doesn't seem to cover it at all.
maybe Internet for people on earth matters more than astronomy
replyWe had that before Starlink flooded the radio quiet zones with leakage.
replyWere that the case, there would have been nobody buying Starlink.
replyAs they are, I think you are wrong.
[delayed]
replyThese are either incidental or unauthorized transmissions. Not the Ku band downlink to terminals.
replyI have such a love hate relationship with the tech. On one hand, I live on the edge of the mountains and can get away while on-call, set up my starlink and still be within SLAs if I got paged while out of service (weekend pages are fairly rare). On the other hand, I'm an amateur astronomer, for visual astro, it's not a huge deal, but I see how it could be for astrophotography (streaks) and obviously it's a problem for radio.
replyI agree. Enlarging Elon Musk’s fortune is significantly more pressing than the ability to learn about the origins of the universe, or enjoying the night sky.
reply“Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.” --https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
replyThat might be dispositive if we didn't already have almost everybody on Earth wired up without using satellites.
replyThe fact that so many people are paying for starlink suggests that it is adding something important that was missing before.
replyStreaming video on airplane flights?
replyMost of Starlink’s customers are simply rural people who want Internet access at decent speeds. There are wide swathes of the US where Starlink’s best competition is measured in kilobytes per second.
replySeems like a case for the US having better fibre deployment than it does for leaking interference from unshielded poorly made tin cans.
replyThat’s a mighty nice field of study you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it
replyWhat I want to know is why astronomers are bitching about Starlink instead of capitalizing on the vastly reduced launch costs it brought about. Falcon 9 has been launching satellites for anyone who asks for a decade now. Where is Harvard’s space telescope? Last I heard they have a 50 billion dollar endowment. They could easily splash out on a space telescope for a fraction of that. James Webb and GAIA are amazing, but we could have a whole networked constellation of space telescopes by now if the universities had been on the ball.
replyGround constellations (eg: SKA in radio astronomy) are still vastly cheaper than orbiting arrays, also easier wrt incremental upgrade via physical visits, etc.
replyI just have to say: I _hate_ with a white-hot fury the growing usage of html-load and error-report dot com bullshit on these sites. I block those domains for gratuitous ad-serving, and sites just cycle a modal error now.
reply(I know, I could disable JavaScript everywhere and enable it on a site-by-site basis. Maybe that time has come.)
I’ve got JavaScript disabled and no websites work.
replyAnd nothing was lost
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