Source: Spaceweather

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:

“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. These satellites are showing up unwelcomed in so many images of the night sky.

The whole situation reminds Spaceweather.com reader Peter Tarr (Chief Science Writer at the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation) of classic science fiction. “For those old enough, 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.”

“Only problem is, it’s not the Enterprise that’s caught in Elon’s Web; it’s Earth-based observational astronomy!” he says.

Source: Spaceweather