a thing we've been thinking about is how much more satelites there are visible in the night sky than when we were a kid, and how bright they are now.
and like this feels like a thing that would be liable to be just my imagination except, no i'm not imagining it, there is a very objective sharp increase in the number of satellites orbiting earth in the last few years, which corresponds directly to increased presence of visible satellites in the night sky
when laying out stargazing on a summer night, we are at the point where satellites are basically a continual presence in the sky. i feel like there's rarely not a satellite visible somewhere in the sky
i have mixed feelings about this. on the one hoof, there's something kind of interesting about it ii guess, the way that a moving starlike object gives a depth cue to how far away the actual stars are, and it gives me more things to look at in the light polluted urban sky
but on the other hoof all these satellites are themselves just, more light pollution. more capitalist trash littering the world. we have seen satellites that are ridiculously bright. in fact, we have seen satellites (not airplanes) in the daytime sky. we used to chase down iridium flares when they still existed, but we hardly miss them anymore with how not-giving-a-shit satellite companies are with reducing reflectivity.
idk. this just feels like a particularly surreal and weird thing to witness over the course of my life, seeing the increasing commercialization of space in my lifetime in an extremely visible way
and imagine all of the satellites i can't see in the city. imagine just how worse the problem must be in a place with no light pollution otherwise, how cluttered the sky must be getting
