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We woke up this morning to many email questions from EarthSky readers in Europe, who saw a line of lights last night (April 19, 2020), creeping across the sky. Some on Twitter likened them to a series of Christmas lights, though they were all one color, and they moved. Others were not so kind in their descriptions, because, in fact, they were SpaceX Starlink satellites, which some fear will ruin the night sky for astronomy. The satellites seen last night in Europe were part of a much larger group of thousands of satellites that SpaceX launched or will launch into low Earth orbit, with the aim of providing global access to the Internet. For example, Chris Jones wrote to EarthSky:
Hi, you’re probably flooded with the same question tonight, but I saw approximately 30 “star-like” objects traveling at high speed from a general west-to-east direction around 21:50 GMT. They all seemed to be in line one behind the other … Now I realize that we are having Lyrid meteor showers right now, but I didn’t expect them to have such a uniform trajectory …
Right! Meteorites would not look like these artificial satellites; Instead, meteorites are bright streaks in the sky that generally appear one by one, or only a few at a time. Starlink satellites, on the other hand, can be seen in a group, sometimes called a “constellation” of satellites, all moving together across the sky.
The video above, by the way, was posted last night by ViralVideoLab. There isn’t much description on VVL’s YouTube page, but the video itself appears to be the same one posted by the Daily Mail last night. Both videos show SpaceX satellites, as you would see them in the night sky. The Daily Mail video is below. If you go to YouTube and search for “Starlink satellites”, you can find a series of videos that look like this one, showing various sightings of Starlink satellites:
The first test launches of the Starlink satellites were in February 2018. But the satellites exploited the consciousness of amateur astronomers (and probably many professionals) in May 2019, after the launch of 60 of the first true satellites in operation by SpaceX. . Netherlands-based satellite tracker Marco Langbroek stunned space fans soon after with a video of dozens of Starlink satellites flying overhead. Watch Marco’s video here.
Sky watchers, frankly, have never seen anything like this.
At first, it seemed exciting. So many astronomers got mad.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8235355/Elon-Musks-Starlink-satellites-cause-stir-streak-skies-western-Europe.html#i-961c59779bc039a5
SpaceX plans to launch about 12,000 of these satellites in total. SpaceX, and astronomers around the world, have been amazed at its brightness in the night sky, and many fear that our night skies will be contaminated by these SpaceX Starlink satellites. trains, as they are sometimes called. Many fear that they can negatively affect the studies of the universe around us that can be done from the ground.
The last thing I heard was that SpaceX was trying to find a way to make future satellites less bright. But so far they have not succeeded. The next launch of the SpaceX satellite will be this week, April 23.
The Starlink satellites are the brainchild of Elon Musk’s SpaceX company. The company wants to create a constellation of thousands of small low-orbiting satellites to provide global access to the Internet. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Bottom line: Sky watchers in Western Europe were shocked last night to see a line of bright satellites, perhaps 30 by some estimates, crawling across the night sky on April 19, 2020. They were part of the SpaceX Starlink fleet. .
Via DailyMail and Twitter
