We had very clear skies earlier this month (or in April? I honestly can’t remember) and I’ve witnessed a couple of Starlink train passes, which got me thinking.
In case you don’t know, Starlink satellites are small, fridge-sized, satellites, launched by Space X. A couple of 🚀 launches happened in April, with each a few dozen satellites on board. After deployment, they travel quite close together in a low path to their final orbit. During that, they are visible by naked eye which it can be quite fascinating. Although I find it interesting, the consequences could be very bad once all 42.000 (!!) satellites are flying around the earth. This video from Alyn explains the situation very well:
I understand that Space X is trying to solve this problem with sunshades, that theoretically make them less visible. But we won’t know if that works until the next launch some time soon.
