: How do astronomers (professionals and dilletante) work their pictures with starlink satellites all over the place ?
In: Technology
Generally we subtract them whenever possible (because they are “small”) but that’s been one of the most frustrating things about Musk’s work: he doesn’t consider anyone else when doing it. That means huge swaths of my work is ruined by streaks and flares from his satellites (which don’t need to be that bright), not to mention my biology friends’ endangered beaches that his rockets threaten.
It’s not good.
Edit: to address the other person, we know about the other satellites, but musk has launched a bunch that are _unnecessarily_ bright for no reason (other than pride). They would work just fine without reflecting light.
Generally the orbits of satellites are well known and you can close the shutter while a satellite is going by and open it when it has passed, as usually you’re taking a long exposure. However with the sheer number of satellites in orbit at this point there are a lot of astronomers who are quite peeved ,and this solution isn’t always viable so you end up getting streaks across the image.
[Stacking](https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/astrophotography/astrophoto-tips/a-guide-to-astrophotography-stacking/) means you take a lot of photos of the same part of the sky, then let computer software remove the things that aren’t in most of those images, kind of like averaging the images, with noise reduction. It is quite effective, but the satellites don’t help, that’s for sure. /r/astrophotography
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