StarLink is leaving Beta

[Mano]

 

[Chalenge]

On the brighter side of the news: Captain Kirk will go to space for the first time Wednesday morning!

[turt21]

Where no 90 yr old has gone before.

[CptTrips]

I had put my pre-pay down for the beta in my zone last month.  Hopefully that just keeps me in line as a pre-pay for the full service.

Elon annoys me  in a lot of ways, but if he gets me reliable broadband at my rural property, I'll forgive all the rest of the stuff. 

[Eagler]

All for everyone getting broadband but hope it's not at the expense of ruining the night sky with pin salamanders of light from these things

I am a fiber optic guy myself

Eagler

[CptTrips]

All for everyone getting broadband but hope it's not at the expense of ruining the night sky with pin salamanders of light from these things

I am a fiber optic guy myself

Eagler

Yeah, because every piece of rural property across Texas just happens to have fiber running across their hillside. 

[Eagler]

No one is forcing you to live in the sticks

Eagler

[CptTrips]

No one is forcing you to live in the sticks

Eagler

That's pretty disrespectful to all those small rural communities hard working Americans who's kids don't get the same opportunities as others because they don't have internet where they live.  It's more of a utility now than a luxury.  Too much of education and employment is tied to it.  There is a lot of economic harm to not having it.

Getting reliable internet across our farmlands is as important as getting them electrification was 100 ys ago. 

Those people grow your food and raise your beef.

[Mano]

When my uncle retired he moved to the sierra foothills in Northern CA. He moved there for economic reasons. Housing is affordable there. DSL and Cable are not available. Dialup is a joke. He has Hughes Net with a satellite connection......his monthly fees were expensive until StarLink came along and he does not watch  YouTube videos, Netflix, or any other streaming service
or he will go over his Gigabit allotment and pay an extra fee and risk having them throttle down his already slow service.  StarLink offers an alternative service with good download speeds and so far much better latency than any other sat provider. Hughes Net removed the monthly download limit, but 25 Mbps d/l is the best they can do. Hughes Net and the other sat providers need to upgrade their satellites or face losing customers. StarLink's low orbit satellites gives them a huge advantage vs. legacy satellite providers.


 

[Lazerr]

Thinking about giving this a try after my contract expires with my 4g router service.  While this 4g is better than the joke of dialup I tried initially, I still really would like something faster.

I'd rather live where I do with no internet, than move into town just for reliable highspeed internet.  I'm sure that statement pertains to a few million people across the country.

[Eagler]

Thinking about giving this a try after my contract expires with my 4g router service.  While this 4g is better than the joke of dialup I tried initially, I still really would like something faster.

I'd rather live where I do with no internet, than move into town just for reliable highspeed internet.  I'm sure that statement pertains to a few million people across the country.

My father in law with his acreage in rural central Florida feels the same way as I am sure many others do

All for it if it doesn't mess with the night sky viewing

Eagler

[Mano]

I have a 5 inch diameter Newtonian Reflector......it is pretty old but still works like new. I have not seen any StarLink satellites nor has a single one stopped in front of
what I was viewing. I have not looked for them. I live close to several cities so there is quite a bit of light pollution. That is probably why. Rural areas can see way more stars.

My telescope has a GoTo key pad and lines up with any well known star fairly quickly once it finishes the alignment procedure. I would imagine if you do long exposure videos the satellites will leave a trail if one were to pass through the object you were recording.

I would like to upgrade to an 8 inch Schmidt Cassegrain with gps once the chip and telescope shortages are over. Everything is back ordered right now.

Satellites have never been an issue for night viewing for me. I am not saying StarLink is not a problem for others, just I have not experienced that yet.

If it has been a problem for some of you please leave a post. I would like to learn more. If you do a lot of photography, post some of the images.

 

[CptTrips]

I have a 5 inch diameter Newtonian Reflector......it is pretty old but still works like new. I have not seen any StarLink satellites nor has a single one stopped in front of
what I was viewing.

My setup:



So if I'm not worried about Starlink, it's doubtful that Eagler has a better claim.

There are already tens of thousands satellites already up there.  Most people never notice them or assume they are seeing a plane.  You can get software that will tell you where to look to spot them.  Sometime after I've rolled off the roof and am waiting for the sun to get far enough around the horizon to have total darkness and to let the air cool and stabilize, I'll sit out and see how many I can spot.  I've spotted around 15 on any given evening. 

It's exactly that time (when I'm not yet bothering to image yet) that you will see most satellites.  It's the time when your skies are dark but the sun is still close enough just over the horizon, that a sat in the right place at the right time can reflect that over-the-horizon light.  Usually for a 2-3 minutes until they move into the Earth's shadow.  Later in the evening you could not spot most satellites because there is no light for them to reflect.  So it's only the hour or so after sunset and before sunrise that the conditions are right for them to reflect at all.  And because Starlink is low orbit, the angles make it so they reflect less often and for a shorter time because they move into the Earths shadow quicker. (The current Hughes Net sat is probably one of those you can see most of the night because the old geosynchronous sats have to orbit at such a high distance.)

I don't think I've ever imaged before 2 hours after sunset.  I've planetary images an hour before sunrise, but the I've never seen a sat, and it's usually the air starting to stir and get turbulent that is the problem then.

And now days digital imaging is almost always a collection of separate images of 4-10 minutes that are mathematically stacked and integrated (for various technical reasons).  I personally have never had a sat crossing, but I've had several planes ruin a capture.  All that means is I throw out that one file and integrate the other 149 images.

I have no concerns about Starlink interfering with my imaging.  But if you could ground all aircraft between 2100-0500hrs GMT-6 on any evening temp > 40 deg and cloud cover ~2/10, I'd be in your debt.







 







 

[100Coogn]

There are already tens of thousands satellites already up there.

Closer to 1,800.

Coogan

[CptTrips]

Closer to 1,800.

I stand corrected.

Regardless, it's almost always aircraft, not sats that get in my images.

It might be an issue for certain imaging projects covering extremely large areas of sky like asteroid search, but probably less that normal air traffic.

And sat's are a completely regular and predictable pattern.  It can be cancelled out with software just like the radio telescopes have databases of satellites to discount any detected signals from man-made objects.

In any case, it doesn't matter.  They are not going to outlaw satellites or commercial air traffic so imagers will work around the issues.  The world moves on.


And the planes fly every night (not my photo)