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Radio telescopes work better on the ground



How about a 1km diameter radio telescope on the far side of the moon? https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html


That's just one though, meanwhile SpaceX is complicating all ground astronomy, you can't just replace all observatories on Earth with one big dish and expect things to be better than before.


According to a broad study of astronomical surveys[1], the impact of Starlink on the vast majority of observatories is quite minor. There were exceptions, like the upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile which uses a wide angle at twilight so is particularly impacted.

Starlink used that study to come up with the night shade idea to mitigate those impacts.

In that survey, radio telescopes were in the "minorly affected" list.

1: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.07446


You must have pasted the wrong link, because the linked article mentioned "survey" 4 times and 3 of those was in a short sentence saying searches for near-Earth objects will loose all twilight...

The severity of the noise for radio was not graded in the slightest, and the word "minorly" is never used.


Only if they are operating when they are in range of the telescope. The satellites know where they are in space, they could just shut off when passing over. Usually not many customers where these things are installed anyway.




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