3225: Satellite Pollution
| 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
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This is one of 45 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
A common concern with new satellite constellations like Starlink is that the fact that they rely on large numbers, they make ground-based astronomy more difficult by adding more noise and possibly obscuring targets.
This comic satirizes that talking about a hypothetical satellite company that launches *deliberately* inaccurate starmaps to be overlaid across the night sky.
Transcript
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This is one of 40 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
[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 (a slightly skewed rectangle).]
- 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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I'm surprised this isn't Black Hat's operation RDiMartino (talk) 21:34, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Space mirrors have been in the news lately. 2603:8081:9700:1224:0:0:0:3 03:50, 28 March 2026 (UTC)
As explained in https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ this wouldn't work anyway since the banner would be moving at 7.8 km/s, or else it would need to be hung from a space-elevator-like counterweight located beyond GSO. If cueball accomplishes THAT kind of feat, I think the astronomers would be more impressed than annoyed. 2A02:590:121B:4001:9505:CE66:9EEB:2974 21:42, 28 March 2026 (UTC)
- Geo-stationary orbit would work though Tanner07 (talk) 14:14, 29 March 2026 (UTC)
- For reference, the quoted 100 miles width at GEO/GSO would roughly span the Moon"s radius (not even its diameter, which is the usual rule of thumb for "how big all other things in the sky look"), so would seem to be on the lower edge of being useful for bringing 'better' views of the sky it obscures (with and without advertising) to the casual Mk-1 Eyeball observer of the universe. Thus it can only really be 'useful' to the astronomers that it's in reality inconveniencing.
- Though if set at ISS level of orbit, 100 miles would be ~45 Moon-widths, slightly narrower than a paperback book held at arm's length (if I'm cross-converting my trigonometry correctly), which would conceivably have some public primary purpose, upon which the secondary purpose of making it look like the stars it is also obscuring (give or take its rapid journey across the starfield, and mis-parallaxing issues unless it has very sophisticated 'observer-adaptive' optics to directly counter this effect) might be a mitigation/sop to astronomers like the minor rejig of Starlinks was to reduce their flare-profiles. 82.132.239.130 11:43, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
- 7.8 km/s isn't that fast though, when viewed from down here on the surface. I love going outside in the evening to watch the ISS go by: it doesn't zoom past in the blink of an eye, it takes a few minutes to pass overhead. That's plenty long enough for a banner to be in view and to get a good look at it. If there are a couple of hundred banners in LEO you'll have lots of opportunities to see them. The real issue is power: during most of the night the banners will be completely dark because they are in Earth's shadow. How will they be illuminated? If the goal is to show fake stars, the banner will need powerful floodlights installed as "stars", so what is powering the floodlights? Martin (talk) 22:23, 30 March 2026 (UTC)
I do wonder if this is in reference to results in search engines, given the "sponsored galaxies", and the tendency to provide fake results at the top for many engines 2806:2a0:b2e:8322::edc (talk) 13:34, 30 March 2026 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
I am reminded of an Arthur C. Clarke story, I think it was Watch This Space, part of a series set on the first moonbase. As scientific experiment involving a cloud of glowing atoms is sabotaged to produce an advertising slogan. Coca Cola is implied but never named.--2A00:23CC:D248:8901:5D76:61B5:C315:E67A 08:05, 31 March 2026 (UTC)
- I'm reminded of the "Galaxy of Trash" scene from Fight club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhaVpD92w-A Kev (talk) 18:49, 31 March 2026 (UTC)
The explanation should include discussion of the Kessler syndrome implications of big space banners. 2603:800C:1200:596A:E98B:D546:F067:DA4 08:46, 1 April 2026 (UTC)
- Actually, there's an idea. We can have corporate entities send up huge nets to capture space debris, and allow them to use it for advertising, assuming it wouldn't then exacerbate the problem. SammyChips (talk) 13:56, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
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