Earlier this year, NASA discovered a new comet with its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope. Casually known as NEOWISE, the object has been closer to Earth this month than at any time in the past 6,000 years. Astronomers and photographers have been looking up at the sky to observe the comet, but one astrophotographer had an unpleasant surprise when Starlink satellites photographed an excellent time-lapse photo.
NEOWISE is what is known as a long-period comet: it has a highly eccentric orbit that takes it deep into the outer solar system for thousands of years before it turns toward the sun (and Earth). Astronomers believe that the NEOWISE core is approximately three miles (5 km) in diameter. For most of July, the comet has been less than 200 million miles from Earth, close enough to see with the naked eye in isolated areas. In urban settings, you need binoculars or a telescope to detect the comet.
Astrophotographer Daniel López recently installed his equipment in Teide National Park in the Canary Islands to take a picture of NEOWISE. The final image, which features 17 separate frames captured over 30 seconds, is spotted by light rays from SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites.
VisorSat is supposed to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening. It works.
Elon Musk dreams of providing satellite Internet access worldwide with this mega satellite constellation. There are already more than 500 in orbit, but the company’s plans require thousands. To avoid the horrendous endemic delay in previous satellite Internet systems, Starlink satellites remain in lower orbits. That also makes them more visible. For example, Starlink satellites ruined observations of the Magellanic Clouds at the CTIO observatory in Chile.
17 30-second images of the comet added by @cielodecanarias, completely photographed by @elonmusk’s #Starlink satellites. There are a few hundred of them right now, there will be a few thousand in the near future. @SpaceX agrees to coat them to better target them, but still … pic.twitter.com/TYtTf5xwhc
– Julien Girard (@djulik) July 22, 2020
SpaceX has promised to tackle the high reflectivity of its satellite network with a system called VisorSat, essentially fins that protect the shiny surface of satellites from sunlight. SpaceX started testing VisorSat on satellites launched in April, but it is unclear how well they work, and independently, SpaceX is launching new satellites every few weeks. If VisorSat is not perfect, there could be many more ruined photos in the future. Musk claims that Starlink will not have a substantial impact on astronomy, even when there are thousands of satellites. Although, he does have a tendency to overcommit himself.
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