Prof. Sam Lawler

No thoughts, just floof.

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Of course there are military Starlinks. Shit.

"The LOFAR researchers also identified more brightly glowing satellites than publicly published orbital data accounted for. The researchers suspect the extras could be military Starlink satellites being deployed for a US Dept of Defense project called Starshield. If they’re right, the satellites are not as secret as the Pentagon thinks—and the interference problem could be worse than the public satellite numbers suggest."

https://www.science.org/content/article/worst-nightmare-elon-musk-s-starlink-satellites-could-blind-radio-telescopes

Oh look, Starlink is continuing to screw up the sky in every way possible.

"Second-Generation Starlink Satellites Leak 30 Times More Radio Interference, Threatening Astronomical Observations"

https://www.astron.nl/starlink-satellites/

It's going to be "hilarious" when Starlink messes up the radio sky so badly that radio astronomers can't even use quasars to calibrate GPS anymore. There are so many consequences from all these stupid, cheaply built, disposable satellites. https://www.universetoday.com/105160/navigating-the-cosmos-by-quasar/

The only feeling I have about starship is dread.

They want to use that to launch batches of HUNDREDS of Starlinks at once. And guess where all those Starlinks will end up? The pieces that don't make it to the ground will end up in our upper atmosphere, screwing up the stratosphere, the ozone layer, who knows what else because SpaceX isn't required to do any environmental assessments of this.

Shit. Maybe a good time to post this essay I wrote yet again: https://theconversation.com/an-astronomers-lament-satellite-megaconstellations-are-ruining-space-exploration-215653

Watch this satellite obliterate the Kuiper Belt object moving through this set of images.

The dumb satellite is so bright that our auto-detect software threw out the whole stack, because it destroyed the average brightness.

It pisses me off to no end that my taxpayer-funded telescope time is now less and less effective because of one for-profit private company.

(P.S. software dudes: please don't try to mansplain workarounds, believe me, a LOT of astronomers are working hard on this)

I just looked up Voyager 1's current position for a talk and saw something wild: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

The distance between Earth and Voyager 1 is actually *decreasing* right now (even though the distance between Voyager 1 and the Sun is increasing). A website bug?

Nope! Earth moves really fast around the Sun. Right now we're moving faster toward Voyager 1 than it's flying away from us

Earth orbits at 30 km/s around the Sun, Voyager is going "only" 17 km/s. I love orbital dynamics!

Really great (absolutely terrifying) research by plasma physicist @carlysagan is being highlighted today on https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=02&month=02&year=2024

Is there *anything* that tens of thousands of disposable satellites won't completely fuck up?

Satellite companies need to stop launching until they fund research on the upper atmosphere and magnetosphere(!) and show their plans are safe (which...is probably impossible since they aren't safe).

My old mercury thermometer says -36C and the official weather report said it was "only" -42C with windchill this morning, so the busses are still running (they never cancel school ever, no matter how cold it gets. This place is wild.)

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Lots-of-alone-time project update: I picked a bunch of willow yesterday because we have tons of it, and I started trying to make a basket after watching a bunch of youtube videos. Turns out...it's a bit harder than I guessed at first! But maybe I'll manage to make a couple of crappy baskets. We'll see...

I also learned that willow branches wobbling around in the air while I work (badly) with them is ABSOLUTELY irresistible to cats, who kept attacking the willows. Not helpful, guys!

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