Is this night sky soon gone forever?
We have light pollution, Starlink satellites, and soon maybe
sun-reflecting satellites too?
Light pollution is the overuse or misdirected use of
human-made artificial lighting outdoors, altering natural light levels at
night. This global environmental problem obscures the starry sky, wastes
energy, and harms both human health and ecosystems.
More than 10,000 Starlink satellites currently orbit the
Earth. We see them crawling across dark skies, no matter how remote our
location, and streaking through images from research telescopes.
SpaceX recently announced that it wants to launch one
million more of these satellites as orbital data centres for AI computing
power.
Mirrors in Space? The FCC Just Approved a Sun-Reflecting
Satellite, and Astronomers Are Worried
For now, a single satellite has been cleared for a test
demonstration, but the company making it hopes to eventually launch 50,000 of
them into orbit.
This picture was taken on the southern part of the island of
Zakynthos, Greece, during a family vacation. Most of the island has light
pollution that ruins the night sky, so we took a drive to the southern part
where there is no city. And the next mainland to the south is Libya, so the sky
was amazingly dark and beautiful. The center of the Milky Way appeared as a
cloud in the night sky.
It would be devastating in many ways if the night sky
disappeared more and more, even today not many people have seen a truly dark
starry sky. The only way for us to realize our place in the universe, how small
we are and that we have to take care of each other.
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