Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric Hahl
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Never said I was an astronomer. Welcome to the 21 century folks, it ain't gonna get any less satellites. Wish I'd be here long enough to see city lights on the unlit side of the moon.
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I hope I didn't come off as condescending.
I knew researchers that wouldn't image within 10 degrees of Jupiter or Saturn, because the glare was too much. Others wouldn't go below altitude 50 or 60 degrees, leaving a small circle of zenith to work from. One professor working on variable stars would (famously and annoyingly) take hundreds or thousands of darks and flats, running the camera for hours into the daylight with the dome closed and the slit sealed with tape to prevent light intrusion. We couldn't do any daytime work around the scope when she was sleeping, while her flats were running.
THOSE people are the ones complaining about satellites. Imaging one of these new zero magnitude satellites going by, that would completely wash out a research CCD
That being said, there is research which is immune to bright sky objects. Thin slit spectroscopy is pretty ambivalent to ambient light. Positional astronomy (double stars, stellar motion, etc) doesn't really need high accuracy magnitude info. Planetary work, obviously. Solar work, duh. Checking out Mary Jane in her bedroom (ha!)