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   Prof. Sam Lawler (sundogplanets@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 09:10:02 JST Prof. Sam Lawler

   (I included the "astronomer" and "not astronomer" categories, because I am pretty sure the people who I interact with here skew pretty heavily toward astronomers so the yes's might dominate just because of that)

   • Embed this notice
     Prof. Sam Lawler (sundogplanets@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 10:33:24 JST Prof. Sam Lawler

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs Amateur astronomer = astronomer!

   • Embed this notice
     faraiwe (faraiwe@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 10:36:13 JST faraiwe

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @sundogplanets @thomasfuchs ...astromateur?

   • Embed this notice
     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 10:36:13 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • faraiwe
     @faraiwe @thomasfuchs @sundogplanets amasteuronomer
   • Embed this notice
     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 10:36:16 JST clacke

     in reply to
     amâteuronomer
   • Embed this notice
     Prof. Sam Lawler (sundogplanets@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-Apr-2024 23:35:41 JST Prof. Sam Lawler

     in reply to

     How worried should we all be?

     This is real-time data of close approaches between stuff in orbit (credit to Dr. Moriba Jah): http://astriacss03.tacc.utexas.edu/ui/min.html

     1-2km close approaches every few minutes doesn't seem too bad, but remember everything in orbit travels at *several km per second* and most of these tracked objects don't have the ability to maneuver.

     It's pretty bad, folks.

   • Embed this notice
     Prof. Sam Lawler (sundogplanets@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-Apr-2024 23:35:42 JST Prof. Sam Lawler

     in reply to

     Ok this poll was fascinating. 1) I thought a much larger fraction of people I interact with here are astronomers. 2) I thought "Kessler Syndrome" had a lot more name recognition!

     Thank you all for providing valuable data for me and my colleagues to use as we try to educate the general public about the dangers of unregulated commercial satellite deployment.

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     Prof. Sam Lawler (sundogplanets@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-Apr-2024 23:35:42 JST Prof. Sam Lawler

     in reply to

     Since several people asked as follow-up, Kessler Syndrome is where the number of collisions between satellites and/or junk in Earth's orbit continue to increase, even if you don't add more to the system. We're probably already at this point, but the collision rate is very low (so far).

     That could change quickly, if there is a collision that releases a large amount of debris close to Starlink's orbital shell, which is by far the densest part of Earth's orbit (and they're adding more every week)

     Thomas 🔭🕹️ repeated this.
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     Michael Busch (michael_w_busch@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 25-Apr-2024 00:06:17 JST Michael Busch

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs A large debris-generating event was avoided two months ago only by the chance of the satellites' orientations: https://www.space.com/nasa-timed-satellite-russian-space-junk-near-miss-february-2024

     And per @sundogplanets , if Cosmos 2221 and TIMED had collided; a fair portion of the resulting debris would have extended down into the Starlinks' altitude range.

     It is not great.

   • Embed this notice
     hnapel (hnapel@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 25-Apr-2024 04:11:25 JST hnapel

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • Michael Busch

     @thomasfuchs @michael_w_busch @sundogplanets

     Haha Kessler did!