Photographing CONTROVERSIAL SpaceX Starlink satellites

alright guys welcome to the break of beakers in South Wales this is my local playground for astrophotography but tonight I'm gonna be photographing something I've never photographed before and there's the space X Starling satellites so I'm gonna try to get some shots and I'll let you guys know what I think about the whole city was a really nice meaty oh sorry that was a that was a Geminid meteor I'm gonna try get some photographs of the satellites and I'll let you guys know what I think about the whole situation [Music] so I'm using the app heavens above which is a really good app to tell you about any satellite appearances in the night sky it's telling me that between 5:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. the Train of SpaceX Starling satellites should be passing over my location it's about a week or two since they launched so they're not quite as bunched together anymore and they probably got into higher orbits now so they're not shining as bright as they would have been in the first few days but either way be interesting to see them because I haven't seen them yet and I just want to see how it makes me feel because as you know it's a very controversial situation right now which I'll talk more about later but I've got a 55 million try and get some shots on the 55 mil hopefully that allows me to see them sort of separated in the long exposure have also got 135 mil on standby to perhaps get some sort of more close-up images and yeah I'm just gonna see what happens a couple of them actually went overhead a few minutes ago and I was hoping to get a shot in the east as they saw set in the east I've got really nice composition with sugarloaf mountain in the Brecon Beacons but they were really bright when they were overhead but they faded before they got anywhere near the horizon so I'm not sure if the shot is gonna work and I'm not actually sure I care or not if the shot is gonna will hook alright so there's one going overhead right now it's on its own I'm just gonna try and get it with the 135 okay I've got him on the 135 you can see how fast it's going but it's on its own I was kind of hoping to see like a trade you know big trail of them there's still a few more to come to keeping an eye on the live map [Music] there's another one oh here we go now we got to have a trial going on who is three in a row well that's weird I try and get this on the fifty as well whoa whoa whoa what is five one two three four five six whoa this is so weird they're trying to get my camera an angle to get more of them in the frame whoa it's just a big train of them in the sky just marching across the horizon my god that's weird I cannot imagine thousands of those in the sky at the same time so I'm just watching the I think it's the last one maybe there's some stray ones I don't know but wow it just they just didn't stop coming it was it was crazy just I couldn't believe how long that went on for and but the thought of thousands of those being in the sky has now become even more terrifying than it already was if that's the future of the night sky there's gonna be thousands of those things up there for the sake of Internet oh man I feel sick I literally feel sick okay so my reaction might have been a little bit over the top there but maybe it wasn't allow me to explain now for those of you who don't know StarLink is basically SpaceX's way of providing global Internet they go launch this huge constellation of satellites that are basically surrounding the entire globe and you basically have broadband internet beamed to everywhere on the entire planet it's their way of basically making a little bit of money and they're going to use that money to fund their missions to Mars which is pretty cool so far they've launched a hundred and twenty satellites in two different launches and the plan is to launch 60 satellites basically every two weeks throughout 2020 and if that happens SpaceX will have over a thousand satellites in orbit and just to give you a bit of context there are currently five thousand satellites in total in orbit so if all goes to plan at the end of 2020 out of 6,000 satellites in space one over a thousand of those will belong to SpaceX not only that there are other companies competing you also got companies like one web that wants to have several hundred satellites in orbit by the end of 2021 Jeff Bezos from Amazon has also shown an interest in launching his own internet satellite constellation and you know musk has permission to launch about 12,000 satellites already and they've also applied for an extra 30,000 so if that goes ahead SpaceX will have permission to launch 40,000 satellites which is insane so there's a bit of a competition between these companies which is really driving a race to just launch satellites and get set up and be the first one to provide the service and there's really not much regulation against satellites and things that you put in space now there's a huge worry because there's already about 500,000 pieces of space debris there's half a million pieces of junk that are currently being monitored by people on earth that's just up there in orbit so if there's any sort of constellation here it's that the the Starling satellites have a lifespan of about one to five years a mission time about one to five years and after that they can use the ion engines to deorbit or bring the satellite back down and it will burn up into this atmosphere and apparently none of the parts will actually land on earth they should all combust within Earth's atmosphere if this act like completely malfunctions then you can't make it the orbit and it has to come down naturally if they are in the ice a little bit then it'll probably take anything from one to five years to drop and fall into Earth's atmosphere of course the other issue was having so much stuff up in space is that there are going to be potential for collisions and this is already happened we saw in the news a couple of weeks ago that the European Space Agency sends a message to SpaceX saying look we think we're on a collision course our satellite and your satellite are on a potential collision course and SpaceX acknowledged that the risk was pretty low but then as the risk actually started increasing the probability started increasing and it was reported that SpaceX basically refused to move this out of the way because they stopped communicating with ESA so eventually ESA moved their satellite out of the way even though they've been in orbit far longer than Starlin satellites and then a spokesperson for SpaceX basically said that there was a bug in the system when they stopped receiving communications from the ESA so but it's an interesting point because there's there's nobody regulating this thing like how do you decide who moves out the way I mean you'd think it would be the newcomers would have to move out of the way so there's a lot of interesting talking points and another thing that's not governed by anyone is the brightness of satellites there's no laws against bright satellites and when SpaceX launched the first batch of satellites astronomers and SpaceX themselves were really surprised just how bright these things were eventually they put the satellite into a higher orbit and because of that they did when they fade and now they know it near as visible as they were just after the launch but they are still visible particularly in the Twilight skies I'm not gonna see them from a sort of like polluted area but in a dark sky area you can still see the satellites in higher orbit and that's exactly what you just saw me doing it was literally just before Twilight I could see the satellites going over and you know if I was doing a time-lapse or if I was doing some Astro photography they would kind of ruin the images and there was an image recently from Pharaoh tallulah Observatory in Chile which went sort of viral in the astronomy and astrophysics a community because they showed how the the Starling satellites basically ruined over five minutes of their observations which you know time is extremely precious in these observations now SpaceX basically said in the next launch of 60 satellites which is scheduled for about another week from the time that I'm making this video one of the 60 satellites is gonna have a sort of painted coat in a black coating on the underside of the satellite which will hopefully stop it from reflecting the sunlight back towards Earth but this is just a test whether they go ahead with the solution or not it depends on whether the coating affects the thermal performance of the satellite if the coating works and they stop reflecting the sunlight it would be great for you know astrophotographers like myself with the wide-angle Astro photography because hopefully they won't really turn up in the so there's a lot of interesting talking points going ahead you know the the general reaction from the astronomy and astrophysics community is being you know a lot of anger and a lot of worry which is great I think everyone needs to be very vocal about this issue and there's a quote from Jonathan McDowell who is from the harvard-smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and it kind of sums it up perfectly for me he said there's a point at which it makes ground-based astronomy impossible to do I'm not saying Starling is that point but if you just don't worry about it and go another 10 years with a more and more of these mega constellations eventually you're going to come to a point where you can't do astronomy anymore and so let's talk about it now honey this kind of just sums up the whole situation for me perfectly we need to be very vocal about it we need to you know continue being worried and angry there just needs to be good communication between the science community and these commercial companies and we've just got a hope that these commercial companies have a sense of empathy and they you know look to maintain our window to the universe and look after the night sky but perhaps the one thing that's bothering me the most about this entire situation is that there's a lot of anger and people being vocal about this issue with the satellites when there's already a way bigger issue that's been taking over all night sky for the past hundred years and that is light pollution and we have lost so much of the night sky to the light pollution it's continuing to get worse it's increasing the blue rich LEDs that are replacing the old streetlights are incredibly impactful and detrimental to the night sky are also to wildlife and to human health and I'm not going to go into it in depth because it could be a whole other video in fact I did a a recent talk for TEDx and that should be online very soon basically about the negative impacts of light pollution so I'll put a link in the video description below once that when he comes out I think it's coming out in the next few days but yeah I just kind of wish people were this vocal this angry and this upset with light pollution as they are with the satellite issue obviously um quite um you know I'm very happy that people are very angry and upset about this a lot issue but I think you know I just wish people would show the same sort of passion towards light pollution because it's just such a huge issue that is largely going unchecked and it's just not receiving the attention that it deserves especially when you see how the rest of the world is so slowly waking up and being more aware of all of the other forms of pollution so let me know your thoughts guys get in the comments box below how much do these startling satellites bother you or do you just you don't care you find them quite cool to look at global Internet is amazing I don't know get in the comments below I'm really interested to see what you guys think about this because I've seen a lot of polarization let's say both sides of the story online so we interesting to see what you guys think anyway make sure to subscribe if you haven't already and you should check out some of my other astrophotography blogs and if you're going out to enjoy the night sky anytime soon I wish you good luck and clear skies [Music]

Channel: Alyn Wallace

Views: 446,599

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Id: hfUmeCBvIQ0

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 15 2019