LAS PALMAS, Spain – What would you think if the stars you see in the sky moved in a row before your eyes? It happened on January 13 on La Palma, it has happened twice more in the last year in other places in the world and represents a nightmare for astronomers: they are the first satellites of the Space X SmartLink network.
It wasn’t even 7:30 p.m. On Monday, January 13, dusk and Antonio González and his friend José Antonio Fernández, two astronomy enthusiasts, had gone up to Llano de las Brujas, in the municipality of El Paso, to watch the show that others had already described in several places of the world every time Space X launches its satellites.
The businessman Elon Musk has proposed to deploy over the next few years a private network of hundreds of satellites in a relatively low orbit that guarantee high speed internet connection anywhere in the world. Wherever you are, in the Himalayas, in the middle of the Sahara, in the Amazon or in the ocean.
At the moment, your company Space X has launched almost 200 of these satellites, in three waves, the first in May 2019, the second in December and the third only a few days ago, on January 7. And his plans are to launch a few thousand of those small satellites, a whole “constellation” at 310 miles high.
González and Fernández witnessed in La Palma how the 60 satellites of the third wave of the SmartLink network are deployed, when they were still in a very low orbit (186 miles) and at a time (the sunset) in which their solar panels they reflect sunlight at full power. “They shine as bright as the brightest star in the sky,” says Antonio González.
This astronomy fan recorded a spectacular video that night at the Llano de las Brujas. Suddenly, a few stars become brighter than the rest, begin to move in rows and cross the sky leaving everyone looking with their mouths open.
The video was recorded with a normal camera, not with a telescope (in fact, under the sky you can see the pines of that area of La Palma), and it is not a “timelapse” of thousands of images chained in exposure of hours and hours . It is real time image. “What a barbarian! One thing is to tell it and another to see it!” Antonio González is heard saying.
The author of those images said that he and his friend were absolutely “excited” at the time, because the show is “amazing.” It is corroborated by Daniel López, one of the most prestigious astrophotographers in Europe, who collaborates in La Palma and Tenerife with the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC).
“It’s like Star Wars,” says Daniel López, who witnessed the same night sequence live in December from Lanzarote, with the second wave of Smartlink. He was not carrying telephoto lenses at the time, he saw it with the naked eye.
And then, reviewing the “timelapse” published in the blog elcielodecanarias.com, found that several of the Space X satellites had sneaked into his videos. In their case, being accelerated sequences, the SmartLink appear in the sky as shots of a laser cannon. That’s why López uses the Star Wars simile.
These two astrophotographers reported the same experience: after the first reaction of surprise, even of emotion, comes concern. “You get the downer when you think how this is going to be when the Elon Musk company continues to deploy its network and then its competition. I dedicate myself to astrotourism, as this continues, we will see in the sky satellites, not stars” , says Antonio González, who organizes night routes with cielos-lapalma.es.
Daniel López agrees: “It can be the ruin for the images I take and I don’t tell you for professional astronomers.”
Because of his collaboration with the IAC, he is aware that astronomers from all over the world have complained worried about Space X, because they are seriously afraid of spoiling space observations from Earth. “I don’t even want to imagine what the sky is going to become when you aim with the telescope and only see streaks moving,” he says.
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