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alexanderpas t1_jaxy593 wrote

Reply to comment by MyDudeNak in Half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. Here’s why that may be a problem by ye_olde_astronaut

> Professional astronomy will be fine

Uhmm...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01903-3

> [...] Observations affected by artificial satellites can become unusable for scientific research [...] SpaceX has been launching Starlink satellites [...] bright satellites could mess up their view of the cosmos by leaving streaks on telescope images as they glide past [...] Even the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits more than 500 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, is vulnerable to these satellite streaks, as well as those from other satellite constellations.[..] we scanned the archive of Hubble Space Telescope images taken between 2002 and 2021. We find that [..] of 2.7% of the individual exposures with a typical exposure time of 11 minutes are crossed by satellites and that [...] increases with time. [...] With the growing number of artificial satellites currently planned, [...] Hubble Space Telescope images crossed by satellites will increase in the next decade

You can't get more professional than a telescope in actual space.

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Adeldor t1_jaxzcb9 wrote

Hubble's orbit has decayed over time. If proposals to reboost it come to pass (by SpaceX, no less), the problem will be ameliorated. If not, the telescope's near end of life anyway.

Meanwhile, future spaceborne telescopes are destined increasingly for far orbits (eg L2) to avoid the biggest photobomber of all - the Earth itself. In LEO it obscures nearly half the sky, limiting greatly what can be observed when - especially for long duration exposures. Far orbits bypass both that and satellite constellations.

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