#astrodon and #SaveTheNightSky story time!
It's been almost exactly 1 year since CNN sent a crew to Regina to film me talking about satellite pollution. Their video story is really excellent: https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/04/04/spacex-satellite-pollution-gothere-cnn-plus.cnn
(side note: I knitted the hat and the cowl I'm wearing in different parts of the interview!)
It was really really neat to work with a mega-professional CNN crew! The first day, they actually came to my farm and set up for a night interview with lights, so it would match the night satellite filming.
They also took a few shots of my goats, which I'm extremely disappointed did not make it into the final cut!
Fortunately the weather cooperated, and the 3rd night of their visit was predicted to be perfectly clear to the north of Regina. So they picked me up and we drove about 100km north-ish from the city.
During the long drive, it was FASCINATING to get to chat with a CNN producer and reporter about different stories they'd covered!
We eventually got far enough from Regina that we would have Bortle 0/1 skies, and found a random snowy field next to a dirt road to set up in.
The night started at -25C or so and kept dropping, which is very typical winter temperature here, but was much colder than any member of this super-seasoned news crew had ever experienced!
The camera equipment kept freezing up, batteries stopped working, and screens gave up.
But the skies were absolutely perfect!
Although I had a hilarious bout of impostor syndrome as it started getting dark: where are all the satellites? What if I convinced this news crew to come up here for nothing? Did I make this all up???
As the first super-bright satellites showed up in twilight, I felt vindicated. And then as it got fully dark and I could see multiple bright satellites continuously, my feeling of vindication evaporated into horror. This is so bad.
And that was a year ago. Starlink has launched (I shit you not) 1,700 more satellites into orbit since then, with 1,500 of those currently operational. According to @planet4589's extremely thorough website, there are now almost 3,500 Starlinks in orbit. https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html
According to Celestrak (another extremely thorough website https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/) there are 7,200 satellites IN TOTAL. Starlink is almost half of them, and they did that in 3.5 years.
Go enjoy your dark skies! Get out of the city and look up. It's changing fast.
So, question for you: what are the chances that when Musk heads up on his next SpaceX flight or whoever owns the damned thing, they run into any of those StarLink satellites? carry on.
you knitted the hat and the cowl during 2 interviews or in 2 different parts of the same interview? My mom used to knit story book characters that were pretty cool. Moms would come order them out of her notebook that Papa had taken pictures of. She had business cards : Wanda's Menagerie. Growing up, she would knit sweaters for my sister, me, and Papa. They were built to last, too. She also did some damned fine afghans. carry on
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