After SpaceX Starlink Launch, a Fear of Satellites That Outnumber All Visible Stars - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/science/starlink-spacex-astronomers.html
▻https://vp.nyt.com/video/2019/05/30/80942_1_30vid-starlink_wg_720p.mp4
A constellation of Starlink satellites seen in the night sky over the Netherlands, nearly 24 hours after being launched by SpaceX
SpaceX anticipates launching thousands of satellites — creating a mega-constellation of false stars collectively called Starlink that will connect the entire planet to the internet, and introduce a new line of business for the private spaceflight company.
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“This has the potential to change what a natural sky looks like,” said Tyler Nordgren, an astronomer
Falling in Love With the Dark - Issue 27: Dark Matter
▻http://nautil.us/issue/27/dark-matter/falling-in-love-with-the-dark
If you see a car along that road,” Tyler Nordgren warned me, “don’t look at the headlights. It’ll ruin your night vision for 2 hours.” Nordgren and I had pitched our tents under the brow of Mount Whitney in the Alabama Hills, a field of boulders near Death Valley. We watched it get dark, and in the nighttime horizon, the sky was perforated by stars and streaked by the Milky Way. Or, to put it in approximate scientific terms, it was probably a 3 on the Bortle Scale, the 9-level numeric metric of night sky brightness. Even so, we could still see domes of hazy light from 200-odd miles south in Los Angeles and 250 miles east in Las Vegas. That encroaching urban glow was like highlighter calling attention to the issue that Nordgren, a prophet whose cause is light pollution, wanted to (...)
Falling in Love With the Dark - Issue 11: Light
▻http://nautil.us/issue/11/light/falling-in-love-with-the-dark
If you see a car along that road,” Tyler Nordgren warned me, “don’t look at the headlights. It’ll ruin your night vision for 2 hours.” Nordgren and I had pitched our tents under the brow of Mount Whitney in the Alabama Hills, a field of boulders near Death Valley. We watched it get dark, and in the nighttime horizon, the sky was perforated by stars and streaked by the Milky Way. Or, to put it in approximate scientific terms, it was probably a 3 on the Bortle Scale, the 9-level numeric metric of night sky brightness. Even so, we could still see domes of hazy light from 200-odd miles south in Los Angeles and 250 miles east in Las Vegas. That encroaching urban glow was like highlighter calling attention to the issue that Nordgren, a prophet whose cause is light pollution, wanted to (...)