As an amateur astronomer, I am happy to see strings of satellites passing overhead in the night sky. They are the consequence of thoughtful foresight and careful planning. They express mentality, spirituality, and materiality. They are evidence of human intelligence in the universe.
I have only seen them naked eye. Living about 10 miles from an international airport, I sometimes get jet aircraft passing through my telescope. Once, I was so deep in space that the plane made me flinch. Almost as often I also see meteors falling through in the field of view, and, of course, I catch them naked eye as I scan overhead for targets. Having been out maybe fifty times in the last two years, I also learned to appreciate naked eye views of deep space objects such as the Andromeda Galaxy, Ptolemy’s Nebula, and the Beehive Cluster. Of course, the Pleiades are as easy to locate as the Moon and planets. Knowledge and comprehension make the viewing interesting and important. Otherwise the lights in the sky could be the campfires of the gods. What astounds me is not just knowing what the natural objects are, but the fact that other humans put objects there as well. We are the sky gods of the ancients.
Some years back, I caught a late night talk show guest, a comedian, narrating about being on an airliner next to a woman who was on the skyphone, complaining to her friend back home that she had just had “the worst day of her life” because her flight had been delayed. I don’t remember his exact words, but it was on the order of this: “Here’s a woman talking to someone hundreds of miles away, while riding six miles above the Earth, close to the speed of sound, in perfect comfort, reclining on a couch, having the worst day of her life.”
Generally, the communities of professional and amateur astronomers all are opposed to SpaceX Skylink satellite constellations. They all predict that left unfettered, these objects will impair if not destroy astronomy as a ground-based activity. I stand alone.
First of all, even if (big if) land-based observation became untenable, it would only be incentive to put telescopes farther out, orbiting Earth or orbiting the Sun out to the asteroid belt or the Oort cloud or wherever. Amateur astronomers already do as the professionals, operating their own remote observatories located in deserts and on mountains, working from the comfort of their home offices. See The Last Stargazers by Emily Levesque reviewed 5 March here. The times are long passed when astronomers sat at the eyepieces of remote telescopes to view the stars. For over a century, work has been increasingly automated. More to the point, is something of a natural process that the observatories built "outside" of London, Cambridge (Massachusetts), and other cities moved ever farther out.
But other people are not happy to see everything that travels overhead. They do complain about constellations of satellites. It might be understandable if they also complained about meteors.
Society for Popular Astronomy: Stargazing for Everyone https://www.popastro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22268
Some Deep Sky
Post by nigeljoslin ¬ยช Thu Sep 02, 2021 3:04 am
[quote=nigeljoslin post_id=119943 time=1630569843 user_id=3023]
Wheeled the 14 inch Dob out last night at about 22:30 under a beautiful, clear sky ...
Sticking with galaxies, I shifted to Andromeda and viewed the majestic M31 and its companions. I noted with interest that in a time duration of less than one minute, three satellites passed through the field of view, a sign of the times. And then when I lifted my eye from the eyepiece, I saw a meteor heading towards Perseus. I saw two more meteors later; I didn't know there was a shower just now but looking on the net I see that the Aurigids were due to peak, debis from Comet Kiess, a `long period' period comet that comes to us from the Oort Cloud.
Best wishes, Nigel
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Backyard astronomers often complain to each other that the viewing was not so good or even completely impossible because of the Moon. Anything more than a quarter Moon makes it difficult to distinguish deep sky objects such as remote galaxies. (We call them “faint fuizzies.”) At the annual astronomy club winter party last December, one of the members told of going to a star party at a government reserve park in Wyoming. The telescopes on the field were all huge, many larger than any government or university telescope of 100 years ago. Some needed their own travel trailers. At that event, Jupiter was considered light pollution. When the planet rose, its light obscured the faintest of the fuzzies.
In fact, as for Jupiter, I have been told that if you get way far out from any lights and can put the edge of a tree between you and the disk of the planet, you can see its moons. On that basis, you have to wonder why no one ever saw them before. But, then, no one charted the Andromeda galaxy until Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi about 964 CE (on my blog here).
My telescopes are modest. My primary instrument is a 102-mm refractor and I usually view best at about 20X to 80X. But even if I had Nigel’s 14-inch (355 mm) Dobsonian reflector, there would always be a bigger telescope somewhere else. Some hobbyists enjoy custom-made (bespoke) equipment, 24 inches or more, smaller than Keck or Cerro Paranal or for that matter Hubble. Eventually, NASA will launch its James Webb telescope. Others will follow. Telescopes will be built and placed even farther out.
And it is important to keep in mind that optical instruments only receive a fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. The universe vibrates at all wavelengths and some amateurs do have their own radio telescopes. But when radio telescopes were invented, commercial broadcast radio already existed. So, radio astronomers adjusted their equipment and their expectations to the reality of the environment.
I accept satellite constellations on the same basis that I accept the Moon and Jupiter and even general light pollution. I am fully cognizant of the fact that last year, when we were shut down because of Covid, my city skies were much clearer. It was a high price to pay for some convenience. The bottom line is that we cannot have skies as clear as our ancestors knew them and also have the instruments that reveal the deep details of those skies.
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS.
The Audacity of Entrepreneurship
Against Dark Skies
Backyard Astronomy
Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction
Binary Star Project
