A Stunning Image of the Australian Desert Illuminates the Growing Problem of Satellite Pollution

[usonian]

April 18, 2025
Grace Ebert

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/04/a-stunning-image-of-the-australian-desert-illuminates-the-growing-problem-of-satellite-pollution/

In January 2021, Joshua Rozells ventured out into the Pinnacles Desert in Western Australia, intending to photograph a star trail. But after shooting for more than three hours and reviewing his images, he realized that the light patterns he captured weren’t what he had hoped for.

“There were satellite trails visible in almost every single photo,” he wrote on Instagram. “Instead of trying to get rid of them for a star trail, I decided to put the satellite trails together into a single image to show how polluted the night sky is becoming.”

Stitching together 343 distinct photos, Rozells illuminates a growing problem. When Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched Starlink in 2019, 60 satellites filled the skies, with a race from other companies to follow. That number has now topped 10,000, with tens of thousands more in the works. SpaceX alone plans to launch 40,000 more.

Original: https://kottke.org/25/04/swamped-skies

No wide-angle lens?

[erronis]

1. That is a stunning and damning image.

It'll take millennia before that type of pollution disappears.

Oh, I see in a comment on the kottke.org site:

The one nice thing about these being in very low orbit is that they don’t last long with out active effort. Perhaps SpaceX will cease to exist soon and if that’s the case, these will burn up on their own.

[liberalla]

5. That is something to hope for... The end of SpaceX and particularly Starlink!

(at least as they exist now)

Thanks for posting that comment.

[JoseBalow]

2. That's just awful

What a sad shame.

[AllBlue]

3. Sad, yet

Not unexpeted. She is likely in the northern suburbs of Perth, a larger city nearing the size or Portland OR. In Perth's case more than 250,000 current population.

[nilram]

8. Satellites are global. Will get the same result in the most remote spots.

[Shipwack]

4. Wide-angle lens?

No wide-angle lens?

There are a few possible answers to this question.

1) A wide-angle lens wasn’t used because this type of lens usually has distortion along the edges of the photo, especially for more distant objects.

2) One was used, and during post processing the distortion was removed by the software. (My personal guess).

3) One was used, but the distorted areas were cropped out.

I’m not sure of the answer because the photographer didn’t include camera data on his post on Instagram, not even in the comment section. By the way, this shot was chosen as a NASA image of the day.

[nuxvomica]

6. The sky looks like a cutting board

One that has been heavily used.

[Bo Zarts]

7. I have a big problem with satellite trails when doing night photography at the wilderness fire lookout tower.

It’s almost impossible to do any exposure longer than about 20 seconds without getting a satellite trail .. and Elon’s Starlink seems to be the most ubiquitous source of my light pollution. Fortunately these trails are usually easy to remove from an image with Lightroom or Photoshop.

[leftstreet]

9. DURec

[airplaneman]

10. When these satellites burn back to earth

They damage the ozone layer.
-Airplane

[central scrutinizer]

11. Manned flights may become too dangerous.

That’s a lot of junk to keep track of. Although if some of those rich assholes on a space jaunt get hit, it’d be a good start.