A time exposure captures trails left by Starlink internet relay satellites after their release into low-Earth orbit last year. Image: Andreas Möller
New research indicates rapidly growing numbers of satellites, so called “mega constellations” devoted to space-based internet and other commercial services, are generating more overall light pollution, or skyglow, than previously understood.
An analysis in
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters concludes the overall brightness of the night sky could increase by more than 10 percent across a large part of the planet.
“Our primary motivation was to estimate the potential contribution to night sky brightness from external sources, such as space objects in Earth’s orbit,” said Miroslav Kocifaj of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Comenius University in Slovakia, who led the study.
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