Hacker News
points by happytoexplain 3 days ago | 0 comments
You are being uncharitable. There is nothing misleading about this, or any other, nightsky timeseries image. It claims to show the paths of satellites over 2 hours, and that's what it does. You have to edit things like this to reveal the signal and keep relatively constant elements from overwhelming the result. Astronomers do this exact same thing (erasing things that obscure the subject over time).

Even if I were to be as charitable as possible to your interpretation, "mendacious" is way too strong a word, and implies an unreasonable bitterness.

[–] fooker 3 days ago
No it is correct. I dabble in astrophotography.

The purpose of stacking hundreds of photos is to get rid of noise and unwanted trails like this.

The effort involved here is to go out of your way to do the exact opposite, specifically make sure things that are in a single exposure show up in the stack.

[–] ryandvm 3 days ago
Somehow you also seem to be missing the point.

You stack photos to enhance clarity and remove noise. Your work is not "mendacious".

But what you are removing is still data - and as you can see, some people find it to be very interesting.

[–] fooker 3 days ago
The issue is not with the fact that it is data, it is the fact we are collapsing two dimensions in this projection. First the time spread to a moment, and then 3D to 2D.

You can make data say anything by doing that.

[–] jebarker 3 days ago
I have no problem with the image and it illustrates a real phenomena. There is something slightly misleading about it though: if you point a camera in the same direction for 2 hours, take many images and then layer the images you wouldn't have a static star background like is shown here. You'd only get that star background if you used a star tracker and kept pointing at the same place in the night sky but then the foreground would be changing.
[–] boxed 3 days ago
If you do the exact opposite then? You take a very long exposure and you mask away the satellite trails and post the image as "image of how the satellites don't pollute the sky".. that's the exact same thing in reverse.

Both can't be non-misleading right?

[–] ImPostingOnHN 3 days ago
> You have to edit things like this to reveal the signal

In this case, it seems like a desired noise was selectively amplified above signal level to portray an artificially low signal-to-noise ratio, with the article concluding "look at all this noise!"

Still a really neat picture though. Well done. I'm considering buying a print.

I also wonder if knowledge of a star map is sufficient to somehow automatically mask out the stars as the earth rotates, and let the trails show through with less effort, vs masking each trail.

[–] Aurornis 3 days ago
The image itself is interesting, but the context in which it’s presented in this article is dishonest.

The headline is the worst offender, saying that the skies are “choked” with satellites.

The headline is misleading. The photo alone is interesting with the right context.

[–] wat10000 3 days ago
The guy who actually made the image seems to just think it's cool: "I knew if I carried on it would look even better and more impressive in terms of satellite numbers."

But the framing from others is terrible. "Who gave anyone permission do this?" Um, every single satellite ever launched has gone through government approvals. Sorry if you didn't start paying attention to the world of space flight until it ruined your attempt at photography, but that's on you.

[–] wolvoleo 3 days ago
There's another point: most of these satellites by far have been approved by the US, nobody else had any say in them. Right now the way it works is that approval is granted by the launching nation only.

As it clearly affects the whole world there should be some kind of international body governing it IMO. But I doubt that will happen because most nations are instead racing to get similar swarms of satellites up.

[–] wat10000 3 days ago
Most countries are party to the Outer Space Treaty, which specifically sets it up that way. An actual international organization would probably make sense now that space activity is ramping up so much, but it's not as if the current state of things is an accident the way "Who gave anyone permission do this?" implies.
[–] bix6 3 days ago
lol what. Regular citizens don’t get a say on satellites and many would prefer we didn’t put so many up. “National Security” will trump any citizen concerns every time.
[–] pintxo 3 days ago
To be fair, the majority of satellites now seems to exist because "money" will trump any citizen concerns every time.
[–] bix6 3 days ago
Agreed, I should’ve added that as the other overriding case
[–] wat10000 3 days ago
In other words, millions of people not only want those satellites to be there, but are willing to part with some of their hard-earned cash to make it happen.

This isn't some nefarious plot to manipulate the market or irradiate all the gold in Fort Knox or something. That scare-quoted "money" comes from providing useful services to people who want to pay for them. Yes, it turns out that millions of people wanting high-speed communication for their rural homes trumps people who get angry that they have to run their astrophotography through some software.

[–] bix6 3 days ago
Sorry which regular rural people are parting with their cash to launch satellites?
[–] wat10000 3 days ago
There's this service called Starlink which currently accounts for the majority of satellites in orbit. Starlink uses those satellites to provide internet access to subscribers on the ground. They have several million paying customers. Their service isn't particularly competitive in most urban areas where more traditional internet services are cheaper and faster, but there are lots of rural areas where they're by far the most competitive option, so that's where most of these subscribers are found.
[–] wat10000 3 days ago
Not sure how you saw "government" and read it as "regular citizens," but do go back and read it again.
[–] bix6 3 days ago
Exactly. The regular citizens don’t get to participate in the decision.
[–] wat10000 3 days ago
Are we suddenly acting surprised at the concept of representative government?

I don't understand what people actually want to happen here. Part of living on a planet with eight billion other people is dealing with the fact that some of them are going to do things you don't like. Governments, treaties, and international organizations are how we manage it. I understand if people disagree with the specific process that's in place for these things, or disagree with the decisions that get made, but they're acting like there isn't any process, or they somehow deserve to be personally consulted as part of it.

[–] bix6 3 days ago
In what world is Elon getting to blanket the sky with tens of thousands of satellites a representative government?