You may have seen a mysterious string of lights lined up on a line on Thursday, moving like a train in the night sky.
Elon Musk is in charge of the show in the sky and tonight there will be an even brighter rerun.
Musk Company SpaceX brought to life The Starlink satellites on May 4 – yes, Star Wars Day – from the 39A Launch Complex (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center. The Falcon 9 booster launched 60 Starlink satellites into the atmosphere.
The last forecast for Friday at 11:30 am, when the satellite train will fly for the first time in the skies of the Bay Area, is Friday from 9:24 pm to 9:25 pm. According to the website, they will be visible for about 5 minutes Heaven, Here you can connect your location to determine when satellites will pass through your region. (Note: the display may change slightly during the day.)
The page indicates that Starlink is almost above your head tonight and is 10 to 15 times brighter than the night before. The satellites will rise from the northwest and disappear in the Earth’s shadow shortly after crossing to the southeast.
You can also check when satellites are passing through your region On here.
The Starlink train is particularly notable in the sky because it is “60 times closer to Earth than conventional satellites” Companiesand can provide communication services to remote and underserved areas.
Made of reflective material, satellites can become visible when sunlight hits them in the hours just after sunset or before sunrise International Astronomical Union.
“They start another 60 every few months,” said Gerald McKeegan, an astronomer at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland. “When they are launched for the first time, they are a small line of satellites that are close to each other and then slowly separate from each other. People like to see these lights, but astronomers just go crazy with light pollution. They are supposed to take them into the atmosphere over time to make them less visible. “
The union and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory have raised concerns in the past that satellites are too bright and cause problems for astronomers.
“The organization generally sees the principle of dark, silent skies as radio as essential not only to improve our understanding of the universe to which we belong, but also as a resource for all of humanity and to protect nightlife,” said the union. in a published statement connected. “We still don’t understand the effects of thousands of these visible satellites scattered across the night sky and, despite their good intentions, these satellite constellations can threaten both.”
McKeegan said the Starlink satellites, like other satellites, are disrupting their work at the Oakland Science Center.
“We have an asteroid search program in the middle that takes pictures of the sky to look for moving objects,” he said. “What happens is that these satellites are drawing white stripes on the image. This spoils the image. It was a small problem before, but it is a much bigger problem with more and more satellites. ”
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