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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   1651 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 30, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Was just outside for a morning walk and by complete coincidence saw a starlink train pass overhead. Two dozen stars in a row is an amazing sight.
After they fell behind the trees I ran in and searched for train locations just in case it was a UFO lol.

I felt identical when I first saw one. I was in a low light pollution area as well, so it was blisteringly clear. I didn't have to look anything up in this case because I just knew what it was, but for a brief moment I thought "UFO" and then a much more calm and elated "Holy shit, we're living in the future".

Man I've only seen it once, but it was insane. Honestly a part of me legit thought it was the beginning of a UFO first contact, my parents came to the windows to check it out too, then I looked it up on Google and it turns out it was Starlink, for some reason it never occurred to me that you could see Starlink with the naked eye early in its launch, I never heard that they looked like a line of stars in the sky either.

I haven't seen one myself, but my parents actually did a month or two ago while walking their dog at night. They hate elon for all the same reasons reddit hates him these days (and mumbled something about space junk), but they still thought it was a neat sight.

My first sight of Starlink was almost transcendental. I had no idea what it was -- I had to look it up afterward -- but I was immediately put in mind of the sci-fi stories of Dyson spheres and Dyson swarms and humanity making its home in the stars.

Haven't seen them myself IRL, but I saw them in the documentary Wild Wild Space. I can imagine I'll get a feeling of "the future is now" when I see them myself. Sounds a bit inspiring. A feeling of possibilities. Until there's way too many and the beautiful empty sky is more of a congested mess, heh. But why are they visible? I don't think I've heard of visible satellites before Starlink.

I don't do as much stargazing as I'd like to, but even before Starlink I caught satellite streaks on long-duration telescope photos, and saw dots that looked too fast+smooth to be planes only to discover they were satellites, both fairly frequently.

Starlink is what gets all the attention for two reasons:

  1. They're very close to us, and brightness decreases with distance squared. They start out really bright (peak apparent magnitude 2.6 - the planets and the brightest hundredish stars are brighter but that's about it) and bunched up in "trains" of a couple dozen at a time, and they don't get separated or get dimmer (mag 5 for the first batch, dimmed to 6.3 for the first "visorsat" designs, brightened to 5.6 for the "v2 mini" design) until they've all spread out (under slow ion drives) and raised their orbits to their final altitude. (larger magnitude numbers are dimmer, and mag 6 is about the limit of what can be seen with the naked eye in a dark sky)

  2. They're very numerous. About a hundred countries have put satellites in orbit, two of them have put at least a thousand in orbit ... and yet if you add up all the non-SpaceX satellites put together, SpaceX has more now. Like 50% more if you only count active satellites. It's something like 6000 right now. They literally launched 42 more with two rockets this morning. They're a bit preoccupied with a manned mission at the moment, so they probably won't be launching a couple dozen more until (checks calendar) Wednesday.

They're in a very low orbit, and get much less visible once there's not a giant row of them.
I sometimes lay down staring at the sky, and even with the light pollution being much worse now it's amazing the things you start seeing. Dim stars, thousands of meteors, satellites.

I don't think I've heard of visible satellites before Starlink

There are hundred of visible satellites apparently, though before seeing Starlink I had only ever seen one at a time.

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