STARlink - STARtrek - The Tholian Web

What’s worse than a train of Starlink satellites cutting across an astro-photo? Two trains of Starlink satellites cutting across an astro-photo. In the Czech Republic on April 19th, amateur astronomer Zdenek Bardon captured perhaps the first picture of two orthogonal Starlink trains in a single image.

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“I was trying to photograph disintegrating Comet ATLAS (C2019 Y4),” says Bardon. “My local night sky suffers from light pollution, and stacking of multiple exposures is necessary in order to image the comet. Unfortunately, I had not considered the trajectories of the Starlink satellites, and many of my exposures were contaminated.”

This is the latest illustration of a growing problem. To date, SpaceX has launched 360 Starlink satellites, with more than 12,000 planned.

Elon Musk said satellites launched from next month will also have ‘sunshades’ and for now his company is ‘fixing’ the brightness of his ultra-bright constellation of satellites, which are disrupting the night sky for astronomers.

But if you look up in the sky and you see Starlink trains and think that they just only crosses each other then you have to see these images.

The remarkable images are screenshots from a video uploaded a few days ago but suddenly deleted again. Even the YouTube channel has been removed which in itself is suspicious, maybe they don’t like that the public see that they are testing the laser communication system.

The laser beams are not visible to the human eye because their wavelengths are not in the visible light spectrum. Digital cameras can capture a wider range of wavenlength, so it´s possible to record the laser beams.

The whole situation reminds Spaceweather.com reader Peter Tarr (Chief Science Writer at the Brain and  Behavior Research Foundation) of a classic science fiction. Bardon’s astonishing image of the cross-hatch pattern made by Starlink satellites is the coming-to-life of ‘The Tholian Web’ of the original Star Trek series.”