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| Satellite Pollution |
 Title text: We're working to make sure the images are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, with a minimum number of sponsored galaxies. |
Explanation
A common concern with new satellite constellations like Starlink is that because that they rely on large numbers, they make ground-based astronomy more difficult by adding more noise, such as disruptive satellite flare producing something like star trails during normal observations. They may also possibly obscure targets, though as the background stars (or even most other astronomical objects) is greatly outpaced by most examples of artificial satellite (especially those in low Earth orbit), this would be a momentary occultation at best, and longer term observations should at least give some opportunities to salvage some decent data.
This comic satirizes this, by talking about a hypothetical satellite company that knowingly launches inaccurate star maps to be overlaid across the night sky. This would not only obscure a fair amount of stars from view, but also show stars that don't actually exist in the night sky, thus providing confusion for an astronomer who fails to identify the interference, and annoyance for any that can.
Of course, such a plan would have many problems in implementing, such as the pure size and strength needed for the banner to survive in space while being large enough to be noticed by casual observers. Also, the banner would need to have its own light source, powerful enough to be seen from earth (although, depending on the distance the banner is from the earth, it would be easy to make lights capable of being visible from our planet; see the laser pointer "What-If"). Finally, the banner would only provide a convincing star map for observers located on a small area of the earth's surface; observers outside this small area would see foreshortening of the star map, and experience strong motion parallax effects when travelling across the earth's surface, making for an unconvincing "sky".
The title text provides one potential reason for the inaccuracies in the banners (and possibly for the banner project as a whole). It seems that certain parties have been sponsoring the project, paying money in exchange for having galaxies added to the star maps on these banners. Possibly these sponsors were disappointed by the relative lack of galaxies visible to the naked eye in the night sky; aside from the Milky Way itself, portions of which can be seen from the Earth as a band stretching all the way across the night sky, only the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (two of the Milky Way's many satellite galaxies) and the Andromeda Galaxy are visible without at least using binoculars. All are easily obscured by light pollution, with even the Milky Way itself being invisible in the washed-out night skies of the populated urban and suburban areas where most humans live; even in dark rural skies, however, although the Milky Way itself can provide a breathtaking view, the Magellanic Clouds appear as irregular blotches and are primarily visible from the less-populated Southern Hemisphere, while the Andromeda Galaxy is visible as a tiny, easy-to-miss oval. The sponsors may have agreed to sponsor the project in order to add additional visible "galaxies" to the night sky and thus make the sky "more beautiful". Fortunately, it seems that the people in charge of the project have realized the problem, and have resolved to cut down on the number of sponsored galaxies in order to present a more accurate star map not as cluttered by fake space objects (although they do not completely remove them, implying that some level of sponsored embellishment to the star map is still required to keep the project running).
This comic may have a connection to the "collapse" of Google Image Search, where trying to find a real picture of a historical event or scientific phenomenon will now produce an overwhelmingly intrusive quantity of results produced by generative AI and easily mistaken as fact.
Transcript
- [White Hat and Ponytail are standing on the left, Cueball is on the right, in front of a poster on the wall. The poster has a portion of the Earth at the bottom, with outer space above it. The space scene has lots of stars, along with a few nebulae and galaxies. Part of the space scene is enclosed in a quadrilateral (apparently a rectangle skewed by perspective) which is attached at the middle of its left side to a much smaller object. Its upper edge shows that it has a little thickness, or at least a parallel stiffening frame, rather than being two-dimensional.]
- Ponytail: Aren't you worried these will be disruptive for ground-based astronomy?
- Cueball: No, why?
- [Caption below comic:]
- My new company is being criticized for our satellites that deploy 100-mile-wide banners painted with inaccurate pictures of the night sky.
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