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Posted by amatheus 3 days ago

Image of our satellite-choked night skies(kottke.org)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/nov/04/viral-image-nz...
144 points | 106 commentspage 2
tetraodonpuffer 3 days ago|
it seems fairly evenly distributed besides the aggregation in the middle, what orbit would that be? why are there so many satellites there?
wat10000 3 days ago|
Most satellites in low orbit are Starlink, and most Starlink satellites are at either 43° or 53° inclinations, so it's probably those. These inclinations cover most of the population in the most efficient manner. Low inclinations don't cover people at higher latitudes. (Inclination is equal to the highest latitude that the satellite will reach, and then coverage extends a little further since they have some slant range.) Higher inclinations waste more time over unpopulated regions.
tetraodonpuffer 3 days ago||
I guess given we have the location, time and what looks like venus to the bottom right it should be possible to figure out the direction the picture was taken in to figure out the exact inclinations of the orbits but yeah, makes sense it'd be starlink
archimedes237 2 days ago||
I look up at the stars and I don't see anything like this image. I see stars and some plane lights.
Kevin_Flynn 3 days ago||
Looks like some of the first 8-bit Moiré pattern demos.

Makes perfect sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern

codingconstable 3 days ago||
ouch more dishes than a tapas bar
throwaway2037 2 days ago||
Uhhh, clickbait?

The opening sentence says:

    > To create this composite image, photographer Brendan Larsen captured almost 600 photographs over a two-hour period and then manually stitched them together.
So, no human eyeballs could ever see that image.
phyzix5761 3 days ago||
This is intentional misinformation and sensationalism targeting a specific political opponent. Get out of here with this nonsense.
freebsd_lovefes 3 days ago||
[dead]
safog 3 days ago||
It is a bit ridiculous these days and it's only going to get worse with basically every major country needing to do a version of this for defence purposes.

Go out tonight and just look at the sky for 5 mins and I'll guarantee you'll see a couple of satellites flying past.

As with a lot of other technologies, the genie is out of the bottle and I don't think we're putting him back there again, this is the future.

wat10000 3 days ago|
What makes it "ridiculous"? I can go outside and look at the sky for five minutes and see airplanes flying past, does that mean our air traffic is also ridiculous?

Of all the things to be outraged over... satellites provide extremely valuable services and are pretty near harmless. There's the pollution from the launches, some uncertain concern over putting materials into the upper atmosphere when they reenter, and that's about it. The thing people complain about most is that they get in the way of photographs of the starts. Which is annoying, but also seems to be easily worked around, and is pretty small potatoes compared to planet-wide communications. Your neighbor operating a leaf blower with a dirty two-stroke engine is harming you more than these satellites are.

wolvoleo 3 days ago||
The air traffic is a lot more guided. Airplanes don't go anywhere unless approved. Satellites are just circling in different directions and constantly crossing paths.

Luckily most sats in LEO do have maneuvering thrusters. But the fuel is very limited and the more of them are up there the more often they have to do corrections. Eventually something will have to give.

phyzix5761 3 days ago|||
All satellite orbits must be pre approved before a spacecraft can ever leave the ground. They're more heavily regulated than aircraft.
wat10000 3 days ago|||
Every satellite is tracked. Potential collisions are monitored and avoidance maneuvers performed. A significant amount of air traffic is completely uncontrolled and relies on looking out the window to avoid collisions. Satellite paths are a lot more predictable, and there's also way more volume to work with.
demo4567 2 days ago|
We never needed this. All of that just to feed divisiveness to people. This was done without our consent. Typical of the pdfile Elon Musk