Following the commercialisation of space flight, larger and larger numbers of satellites orbit the earth at low altitudes. The streaks they leave in images when passing through the field of view of a telescope can impact ground-based astronomical studies, and this is expected to become much more common in the near future. For this episode of the science ramble, let’s take a look at the night sky, now home to new mega-constellations of communications satellites.

Further resources

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The original paper featured in this episode: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ac470a

A brief history of space-flight: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/spaceflight