Spotting a Starlink satellite train during lock-down

These days there’re a lot of things we would like to be able to do that we can’t due to the Covid-19 lock-down. For me, one of those things has been doing some astrophotography.

The last blog post showed a handheld shot with the International Space Station (ISS) as a small dot, which was pretty hard to see. Much better is a long exposure taken with a tripod in an open space far from lights, such as a park, which creates a curving line across the sky. Alas with lock-down I’ve been unable to do this and am limited by those parts of the sky visible from my apartment’s balcony.

One such example of what was visible is this:

You should be able to see two faint lines, and each one is a Starlink satellite. Starlink is the SpaceX project to launch a constellation of satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) to provide high speed internet access. Technically this would be called a non-geostationary orbit (non-GSO) fixed satellite service (FSS) system.

At present the constellation isn’t complete, and the satellites haven’t spread out with a near as possible even distribution over the Earth. Most are clumped together with the other satellites launch at the same time - and typically 60 are deployed in one go. This means they fly over in a sequence or train of satellites.

It’s quite dramatic to watch but the astronomers are worried it might impact their work and there’re also significant concerns about space debris.

But that’s for another day, and for the time being let’s just enjoy the show.