Strange Lights Over South Aurora

[mindfold]

Just saw a line of lights heading from the southwest toward the Northeast. It was about 20 lights all spaced evenly. No sound. Happened around 5:45.

Starlink maybe. Just never saw this before.

Anyone else see them?


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[ray1970]

I?m sure BushmasterBoy will be along to explain extraterrestrial activity to you shortly.

[kidicarus13]

But I thought 3-letter agency drones in formation was the proper Colorado answer.

[SideShow Bob]

Sure you weren’t observing the flight/landing path to DIA ?
I’ve seen the landing lights of stacked and landing airliners before.

[BushMasterBoy]

Spacex satellites reflecting light. It is my understanding that our friends in northern USA & Canada can get fast internet from them.

84037

[mindfold]

Sure you weren?t observing the flight/landing path to DIA ?
I?ve seen the landing lights of stacked and landing airliners before.

Yup pretty sure. After searching on YouTube, it was Starlink. Pretty damn cool.


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[Scanker19]

Saw that here in NM last night

[GilpinGuy]

Spacex satellites reflecting light. It is my understanding that our friends in northern USA & Canada can get fast internet from them.


I signed up for their beta program a while ago. IIRC, the very northwest US and lower Canada are first to get this. For rural folks, this could be a game changer, especially with so many working from home these days. I'd love to give it a try.

[Great-Kazoo]

and down here last week.



Science Fiction, double feature.

[kwando]

Heard on the news it was SpaceX Starlink program. Maybe that’s what you saw

[Grant H.]

As has been said, it was likely Starlink birds. There are currently 900+ starlink satellites in orbit, with a planned constelation of 12,000. That 12k could be expanded out to 42k depending on need/availability. Starlink birds are launched in groups of 60 (usually, some times ride shares reduce that number) and are released in a group. They then conga-line their way into their appropriate orbits over the course of a few days to a few weeks depending on what their planned orbit is.

Once SpaceX gets their Starship LV up and running, it should be capable of launching 400 starlink sats in a single shot.


This might be of interest to folks in this thread...

http://celestrak.com/cesium/orbit-viz.php?tle=/pub/TLE/catalog.txt&satcat=/pub/satcat.txt&referenceFrame=1

There is a lot of stuff up there.

[Martinjmpr]

We saw some of those in May of 2019 while on a camping trip. We had no idea what they were.

Best part is that we were camping at the "UFO Watchtower" in the San Luis Valley near Great Sand Dunes. Thought we were seeing real UFO's! [panic]

Then one of the people we were camping with pulled out her phone and looked it up - sure enough it was Starlink.

But it had us going for a minute there! [Beer]

[daemon]

Site for Starlink sightings: https://findstarlink.com/#1554;3 . Starlink should be visible in Denver tonite and tomorrow night.

[Aardvark]

An anti-aircraft unit in C.Springs let a burst fly north. Far enough away you couldn't hear it. Now...where's my rum gone... ;-)

[O2HeN2]

Did it look like this?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgysWWwESfU&ab_channel=ViralVideoLab

O2

[FoxtArt]

My brother and his young kids saw the first train when camping out around Norwood without any cell service. In small part, they were halfway wondering if they could be ICBM's (west from China). Once they got back to civilization they were amused!


It really is a tragedy that we are permitting these constellations IMHO.

This is for internet service that will be obsolete in under 5-10 years, we're increasing the number of satellites in earth by orders of magnitude... And the constellations will not naturally deorbit for much, much, much longer then that. Inevitably they will want approval for another 40,000 satellites in 5 years to provide for increases in bandwidth, customers, and technology.

40,000 satellites will make it all but cause radio telescope observations to be near worthless from earth; on top of all the other issues it causes, as well as long term risks. And then we have all the other constellations pending approvals. At some point it will be difficult for kids to discern what stars are from all the movement in the background.

I wish we preserved orbital space for longer-term missions, advancing science, etc... and not throwing it all away for another bullshit ISP option for customers to download porn. What's next?

[GilpinGuy]

This is for internet service that will be obsolete in under 5-10 years

How so? 5g won't be up here for a loooooooong time. I've been up here for 20+ years and the ONLY option is satellite internet or, if you get a decent enough signal, a cell based service (and thats only if you don't need it to be super fast).

[00tec]

https://kdvr.com/news/local/friday-night-sky-lights-what-were-those-bright-spots-caught-on-video-and-camera/

[FoxtArt]

How so? 5g won't be up here for a loooooooong time. I've been up here for 20+ years and the ONLY option is satellite internet or, if you get a decent enough signal, a cell based service (and thats only if you don't need it to be super fast).

Obsolete in the sense of Moore's law. Their competitors and China will launch 20,000 sats that offer 4x the bandwidth, so spacex is going to need to launch another 35,000 to do 6x the bandwidth, India will need to launch 30,000, then spacex will have a breakthrough and need to launch another 25,000.... It's of course entering new markets, but it also opened the flood gate. China is already planning their own as are competitors, and it's the underlying competing technology that they will constantly want to update. And besides, once we have 80k what's another 15,000?

[FoxtArt]

Internet service is something that is not even a decade long proposition for hardware anymore. Bandwidth requirements will likely double every 5 years. These sats stay in orbit up to hundreds of years. Last I heard Somewhere between 9 and 12 of them are already dead and uncontrolled. Risks include blocking off space entirely due to cascading collisions (Kessler IIRC) and being essentially blind to incoming near earth objects since the radio telescopes are the most effective at identifying them. And NEOs are not "if it happens" just "when" for a city or country killer. Probably not in our lifetime, but it would sure suck to have last-minute notice for sake of good quality on the Netflix before we are pulverised into goop.

[GilpinGuy]

Meh, sounds like "These darn automobi-whatevers are gonna kill all our horses on the trail" to me.

It's coming, like it or not.

[Irving]

I think there are some pretty legitimate concerns of you care about being able to watch space, and also further separating people from the ability to see the stars. However, still feels a bit like, "what are you going to do?" I assume that with effort, junk in our orbit can be cleaned up. I also realize that at this time, it's similar to cleaning junk off of Everest, where sure it's possible, but the difficulty is so high that dead bodies are littered around the mountain because it's so difficult.

[GilpinGuy]

I find it hard to believe that even Musk would be so naive to
invest billions into something that would so obviously be obsolete in as little as 5 years. But I don't pretend to be a genius either.

[Erni]

Starlink sats are at an altitude of 550km. The decay of that orbit is a few years. At 400km satellites will experience enough air drag to re enter in 6months or so.
Elon will be buying launches from himself every few months as long as starlink is up.
Gravity is a harsh mistress.

[BladesNBarrels]

... it's similar to cleaning junk off of Everest, where sure it's possible, but the difficulty is so high that dead bodies are littered around the mountain because it's so difficult.......

Mount Everest has claimed 300 lives, and 150 bodies remain on its slopes because of the expense and danger of retrieving them

https://i.imgur.com/meh9S5o.jpg

[Hound]

Actually the sats are built to de-orbit themselves when they are no longer working or they have too much drag. They will be up only as long as they are useful. This allows them to continuously be updated. It is also going to provide Internet around the world to places it would never be possible for terrestrial options. It is not meant for urban areas. Soon they are going to be talking to each other (with in next 1.5yr) through a laser system that will greatly improve bandwidth. The efficiency will grow over time. These are the things you can do when you own the equipment that gets you to space and you don’t have to buy a new truck every time you want to send something up. Pretty amazing time to live in. Elon is a modern day Howard Huges.

[Aloha_Shooter]

Starlink sats are at an altitude of 550km. The decay of that orbit is a few years. At 400km satellites will experience enough air drag to re enter in 6months or so.
Elon will be buying launches from himself every few months as long as starlink is up.
Gravity is a harsh mistress.

Gravity is what makes the orbits work. The only natural force that will reliably cause the orbits to decay at that altitude is atmospheric drag and there's not much of it above 500 km unless the object is specifically constructed to create drag. I don't know why you think the orbital lifespan at 550km is only a few years. The Long Duration Exposure Facility was placed in an orbit of 473 x 483 km and was up for nearly 7 years -- in fact, it had to be retrieved by Columbia so it didn't even get a natural decay.


Actually the sats are built to de-orbit themselves when they are no longer working or they have too much drag. They will be up only as long as they are useful. This allows them to continuously be updated. It is also going to provide Internet around the world to places it would never be possible for terrestrial options. It is not meant for urban areas. Soon they are going to be talking to each other (with in next 1.5yr) through a laser system that will greatly improve bandwidth. The efficiency will grow over time. These are the things you can do when you own the equipment that gets you to space and you don?t have to buy a new truck every time you want to send something up. Pretty amazing time to live in. Elon is a modern day Howard Huges.

You're presuming the satellites are operational to deorbit themselves. There are a number of non-functional Starlinks that have not done so. Musk is a visionary but that doesn't mean his visions are always spot-on. Starlink and SpaceX are approaching global communications and space launch in new ways -- but sometimes those new ways are short-sighted or just plain wrong because of the effect they have on other global activities.

I think both of them -- as well as Tesla and the associated solar power investments -- are part of Musk's long term plan to bootstrap himself into a spacefaring civilization, much like Heinlein's fictional Shipstone and D. D. Harriman, and he's willing to break some eggs like the impact on terrestrial astronomers or Low Earth Orbit spacecraft in order to get people outside Earth's gravity well.

[BladesNBarrels]

Looks like the gummint better step in and start taxing those satellites to pay for the pandemic recovery and to develop a space garbage eater machine.
Yep, yep.

[Coffee]

[Grant H.]

Don't forget folks, it's a BIG damn sky...

All the astronomy (visual and radio) hand-wringers are doing exactly that, hand-wringing because the build out of satellite constellations doesn't fit with their idea of how important they are.

[Aloha_Shooter]

Don't forget folks, it's a BIG damn sky...

All the astronomy (visual and radio) hand-wringers are doing exactly that, hand-wringing because the build out of satellite constellations doesn't fit with their idea of how important they are.

It's not that big when folks start doing stupid stuff like autonomous maneuvering. In some ways, Starlink acts like a fleet of 300 mountain bike riders who don't realize or care that there are other people using the trails or outdoors.

[Grant H.]

It's not that big when folks start doing stupid stuff like autonomous maneuvering. In some ways, Starlink acts like a fleet of 300 mountain bike riders who don't realize or care that there are other people using the trails or outdoors.

I'll agree to a point, there is some downside. However, I work in Earth Intelligence, and these are below our usual orbits, and we aren't worried about them from an obstruction standpoint. Yes, 12k or 42k satellites is a LOT, but it's not a "sky obliterating" number (I've seen that description used by anti-Starlink/OneWeb/Apple/Amazon folks).