Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Joey Gallo returns, but Nats endure another quiet offensive night

Bryce Harper, Joey Gallo and a bond forged by baseball since they were kids

A taco will always be a taco — no matter what we call it

How Jim Jordan tried to connect the dots on Biden’s $8 million book deal

‘Never Trump?’ ‘Never Biden’ voters might loom larger.

Ukraine gamble pays off: Republicans face little backlash in primaries

Carolyn Hax: Is it weird to ask other people to care about you?

Ask Amy: Can’t a single woman eat alone without interruption?

Miss Manners: Miss Manners: Gag gift falls flat

At campus protests, ‘DO NOT TALK TO THE MEDIA’!

Trump’s lawyer charges Michael Cohen lied to jury

CNN gets a presidential debate — and a much-needed win

Biden’s false claim that inflation was 9 percent when he took office

Did Obamacare ‘massively’ increase the cost of health care?

The world’s coolest hotels want to tell you a story

Cruise ships to return to Baltimore two months after bridge collapse 

Some cruise prices are about to get a little more clear

Blue Origin to fly again as space tourism struggles to get off the ground

These ISIS news anchors are AI fakes. Their propaganda is real.

Boeing delays spaceflight again as it continues to struggle with leak

Mexican taquería’s new Michelin star puts street eats on par with gourmet food

Police believe a U.S. rapist killed several women in Canada

With its energy network nearly destroyed, Ukraine already fears the winter

Book Tour: At home with Amor Towles

In photos: The scene in Houston after severe storms killed at least 7 people

Civilians flee new Russian attacks on Ukraine border

She finished chemo then got a medical degree: ‘The dream is real now’

Puppy abandoned with heart-rending note is adopted, named Minerva

Man, 91, shocks tiny firehouse with $500K gift: ‘Nobody knew how much I’d saved’

Russia shows resilience. There is more to do for Ukraine.

Trump promises tax cuts and fewer rules. CEOs shouldn’t fall for it.

Tariffs against China hamstring the transition to a clean energy future

Trump

Reporting on Earth’s changing climate and the search for solutions

See more coverage in your recommendations

Climate & environment

The Climate Coach newsletter

Climate alerts

It’s not a bird, it’s not a plane, and it’s definitely not Superman. About 330 miles above the ground, there’s a commercial satellite outshining most stars — and, as a result, threatening astronomers’ data collection of our night sky. The light pollution is expected to worsen as companies plan to send thousands more satellites into space without regulations on how bright they can be.

In 2022, the Texas-based AST SpaceMobile company launched the BlueWalker 3 satellite to space to bring cellphone service across continents. But the ambitious project shined so brilliantly that it was among the top 10 brightest objects in the sky, according to a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06672-7" target=_blank>study published in the journal Nature this week. </a>

“The satellite would be ranging among the top 10 brightest objects if you count the stars and the sun. It’s just incredible,” said Siegfried Eggl, a co-author of the study and aerospace engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “It’s a byproduct, I think, of the fact that these environmental considerations are generally not done.”

The new study quantifies the brightness of the satellite over 130 days. Amateur and professional astronomers recorded overpasses from Chile, the United States, Mexico, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Morocco. Researchers evaluated the glow on a magnitude scale, where smaller numbers indicate brighter objects. The North Star, for instance, has a magnitude of plus-two. The team found that BlueWalker 3 registered as bright as plus-0.4.

The issue of the BlueWalker 3 satellite lies in its size. Its antenna array is 64 square meters and is the largest commercial antenna system deployed in low Earth orbit. The large antenna helps bounce cell signals back and forth across the globe; the bigger the antenna, the better the call quality. But the antenna also reflects a lot of light back to Earth, making it appear so bright in the sky.

“Once it unfurled its antennae, it was 100 or more times brighter,” said Brad Young, an amateur astronomer with the <a href="https://cps.iau.org/" target=_blank>Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference</a>. “It is [a] huge increase in the area of the antenna reflecting light back.”

The extra light has several implications for astronomers but also nonscientists. Eggl said the light interferes with data collection. For instance, streaks of satellites could mask objects in the vicinity of Earth — like an asteroid. A previous study by Eggl showed that a portion of near-Earth objects could be affected by these streaks in data.

Light pollution also affects people’s circadian rhythms and migratory patterns for other animals.

Astronomers are already battling some of these issues with swarms of satellites, including SpaceX’s Starlink telecommunication satellites. Thousands of Starlink satellites travel across the night sky in a train formation, sometimes appearing as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2023/starlink-satellite-train-spacex-visibility/" target=_blank>an otherworldly UFO</a>. Eggl said each individual Starlink satellite is already 10 times brighter than what the astronomy community would like. SpaceX plans to launch 40,000 satellites.

But the BlueWalker satellite could quickly make conditions a lot worse. The fully extended satellite is much larger and much brighter than a Starlink satellite. With the recent launch as a prototype, AST SpaceMobile plans to send more into space, some potentially bigger.

Even without the added light, the surge of satellites could pose a problem for other launched objects. Collisions could produce a swarm of debris, which may affect or even damage other satellites in their path.

“As astronomers, we don’t want to be the Grinches of economic development or the Grinches of new developing nations arriving as actors on the space stage,” said cosmologist Aparna Venkatesan, who was not involved in the new study. “But right now, the unregulated terrain means that we are not assessing the environmental impact or the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01904-2" target=_blank>light pollution impact</a> or many other consequences of these in systematic ways.”

Venkatesan, a professor at the University of San Francisco, said a goal would be to bring companies together under a regulatory umbrella, where operators can share with each other their specifications, satellite brightness, which film coatings they are using and other tactics to darken their satellites.

A spokesperson for AST SpaceMobile said the company is actively working to address the concerns of astronomers. In an email statement to The Post, the spokesperson said they are collaborating with NASA and astronomy working groups to come up with advanced industry solutions. Some of those include using roll-tilting flight maneuvers that could “significantly reduce apparent magnitude,” employing anti-reflective material in the next-generation satellites and sharing details or location data to help astronomers plan their observations.

But some astronomers still want more action. Astronomer Fabio Falchi, who was not involved in the research, called for strict regulation — but for banning, not mitigation. He says astronomers are too flexible in allowing companies to launch swarms of bright satellites and urged more astronomers to take a stand in a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01864-z" target=_blank>published commentary piece in March</a>.

“The spoiling of the pristine condition of the night sky is an intangible and unprecedented attack to the cultural heritage binned to the night sky,” Falchi, a researcher at with the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute, wrote to The Washington Post. “Nowhere in the world will remain the possibility to see a starry sky with no satellite ruining the experience.”

This article is part of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/hidden-planet/" target=_blank>Hidden Planet, </a>a column that explores wondrous, unexpected and offbeat science of our planet and beyond.

A photo caption in the story incorrectly referred to a satellite as over the Spanish National Observatory in San Pedtro Martir, Mexico. It is the National Astronomical Observatory. The caption has been corrected.

Wake Forest University, BS in Chemistry

Boston University, MS in Science Journalism

Kasha Patel writes the weekly Hidden Planet column, which covers scientific topics related to Earth, from our inner core to space storms aimed at our planet. She also covers weather, climate and environment news.

Kasha Patel

Astronomers are worried about this satellite that’s brighter than most stars

the-washington-post

I. Plauchu-Frayn

Environment

Weather

Climate Solutions

Climate Lab

Green Living

Business of Climate

Climate

washpost

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/climate-environment&limit=20

Sign up for the Climate Coach newsletter and get advice for life on our changing planet, in your inbox every Tuesday.