The End of the Night Sky as we Know it!

"The end of the night sky as we know it."  Yeah, that sounds overwrought, doesn't it.  But it is not.  Not at all.  We had an outreach tonight at a nearby high school and there was a good turnout to look at the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn.  At about 7:15 there was a pass of the most recent launch payload of Starlink satellites (about two dozen) that took a west-to-southeast track across the sky between roughly 7:16 and 7:19 p.m. EDT.  One of the women saw the "train" of 24 satellites and hollered out and pointed at it. The satellites were bright at magnitude +2.6.  Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by American aerospace company SpaceX,  providing coverage to over 60 countries. It also aims for global mobile phone service after 2023.  SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019. As of August 2023, it consists of over 5,000 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit, which communicate with designated ground transceivers. Nearly 12,000 satellites are planned to be deployed, 

This is what the train looked like when we first saw the 24 satellites.  They were climbing up from the west and then began to descend to the southeast, after passing nearly overhead.

Astronomers have raised concerns about the effect the constellation may have on ground-based astronomy, and how the satellites will add to an already congested orbital environment. SpaceX has attempted to mitigate astronometric interference concerns with measures to reduce the satellites' brightness during operation.  However there are numerous examples of long exposure photographs of the night sky, ruined when 24 streaks run through the middle of the image.  As I first said, the end of the night sky as we know it!

Here is a NASA image of the Orion Nebula, ruined by the passage of Starlink Satellites.