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🚨 Beyond the limit 🚨

New ESO study finds that current proposals to launch 1.7+ million satellites into orbit would have devastating consequences for astronomy.

The most extreme proposals come from SpaceX & Reflect Orbital

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📷 F. Kamphues, ESO/M. Kornmesser

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science #environment #pollution

The background of this image shows a starry sky, including the bright lane of the Milky Way. Hundreds of bright streaks cross the sky in different directions, as if scratching the background natural sky behind it. The bottom of the image is occupied by the dark silhouette of a mountainous desert landscape. Atop the mountain at the centre, is a small, distant metallic dome and yellow-orange lasers shine behind it.
#Space #Environment #science #astronomy #astrophysics #pollution #Astrodon

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SpaceX plans to launch 1 million satellites for space-based data centres.

This diagram shows the satellites that would be visible above our VLT:

⚪ invisible satellites in Earth’s shadow
🟠 2000 satellites brighter than magnitude 7
🔴 200 satellites brighter than magnitude 5

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📷 ESO/O. Hainaut

A globe is full of dots of various colours. The grey dots are satellites in the Earth’s shadow and therefore invisible, whereas the coloured dots are illuminated satellites. The orange dots, almost 2000 of them, correspond to satellites brighter than magnitude 7 –– the faintest brightness visible to the naked eye from extremely dark locations. The red dots, more than 200, are satellites brighter than magnitude 5, which corresponds to the faintest objects visible to the naked eye from a suburban location.
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