星鏈衛(wèi)星徹底炸毀了那場罕見的“獨角獸”流星雨的鏡頭

星鏈衛(wèi)星徹底炸毀了那場罕見的“獨角獸”流星雨的鏡頭

Starlink has had its fair share of critics in the last few months. The ambitious SpaceX project to launch up to 42,000 satellites and provide worldwide internet access has the International Astronomical Union, scientists, and stargazers nervous about the implications of such a huge number of satellites in our orbit.

在過去的幾個月里，星鏈衛(wèi)星受到了不少批評。美國太空探索技術公司(SpaceX)雄心勃勃地計劃發(fā)射多達4.2萬顆衛(wèi)星，并在全球范圍內(nèi)提供互聯(lián)網(wǎng)接入。這一計劃令國際天文學聯(lián)盟(International Astronomical Union)、科學家和天文愛好者感到不安，他們擔心我們的軌道上有這么多衛(wèi)星會造成什么影響。

The recent Monocerotid meteor showers did nothing to calm down the critics, after a large train of satellites photobombed the natural display in the early morning over a number of days last week.

最近的單片流星雨并沒有平息批評家們的批評，在上周的幾天里，一大批衛(wèi)星在清晨對自然景觀進行了照片轟炸。

You can see what this looks like in footage taken by the Global Meteor Network (GMN) camera at the Farra Observatory in Italy on November 25 (the satellite bombing begins just after 1:00):

11月25日，全球流星網(wǎng)絡(GMN)攝像機在意大利法拉天文臺拍攝了這段視頻，你可以看到它是什么樣子的。

It looks impressive on the timelapse, but it looks even more insane on the GMN co-added images:

它看起來令人印象深刻的時間推移，但它看起來更瘋狂的GMN聯(lián)合圖像:

It was a real eye-opener, Bill Cooke, the lead of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office told Space Weather, after he saw the video.

美國宇航局流星體環(huán)境辦公室負責人比爾·庫克在觀看了這段視頻后告訴《太空氣象》說:“這真是讓人大開眼界。”

This kind of thing could force us to change how we write software to auto-detect meteors.

“這類事情可能會迫使我們改變編寫自動探測流星軟件的方式。”

And this isn't just on one camera. The GMN have over 150 meteor cameras across the world, and around half got a nice dose of Starlink in their view.

這不僅僅是在一臺攝像機上。GMN在全球擁有超過150個流星照相機，其中大約一半在他們的視野中得到了良好的星光。

Here's another GMN image taken on November 25, this one from Cherkessk in Russia.

這是GMN在11月25日拍攝的另一張照片，來自俄羅斯切爾凱斯克。

As you can probably tell from these shots, this situation is far from ideal if you want to be studying the night sky. The GMN explains that in this instance the satellites – which were launched on November 11 - didn't interfere with the meteor observations, but they were nervous about how this would affect their capabilities in the near future.

你可以從這些照片中看出，如果你想研究夜空，這種情況遠非理想。GMN解釋說，在這種情況下，11月11日發(fā)射的衛(wèi)星沒有干擾流星觀測，但他們擔心這將如何影響他們在不久的將來的能力。

One has to be concerned how will our skies look like when hearing that there are plans to launch a total of 42,000 satellites, University of Western Ontario meteor researcher Denis Vida stated in a GMN blog post.

西安大略大學的氣象研究員丹尼斯·維達在GMN的一篇博客文章中說:“當聽說計劃發(fā)射42000顆衛(wèi)星時，人們不得不擔心我們的天空會是什么樣子。”

This might completely deny us to do any optical meteor observations as soon as 2024.

“這可能會完全阻止我們在2024年進行任何光學流星觀測。”

It's important to note that the current Starlink 'trains' we keep seeing in videos and scientific imaging shouldn't be as intrusive in a few weeks, as they are still rising to their final altitude. When the satellites are in their final position, they won't all be in a line, or crossing the same patch of sky at once.

需要注意的是，我們在視頻和科學成像中不斷看到的目前的Starlink“列車”在幾周內(nèi)應該不會有那么大的干擾，因為它們?nèi)栽谏仙阶詈蟮母叨?。當衛(wèi)星在它們的最后位置時，它們不會排成一條直線，也不會同時穿越同一塊天空。

Additionally, Elon Musk's SpaceX is looking into making the satellites a little less shiny, so they won't reflect the morning Sun in the way we keep seeing.

此外，埃隆·馬斯克(Elon Musk)的太空探索技術公司(SpaceX)正在考慮讓這些衛(wèi)星變得不那么閃亮，這樣它們就不會像我們一直看到的那樣反射早晨的太陽。

However, the number of satellites SpaceX is looking to shoot into space is completely unprecedented.

然而，SpaceX打算發(fā)射到太空的衛(wèi)星數(shù)量是前所未有的。

Astronomers are likely to have some pretty understandable problems getting used to the change to our night skies - some have even predicted the end of ground-based microwave radio astronomy.

天文學家們可能會遇到一些非常容易理解的問題來適應我們夜空的變化——有些人甚至預言了地面微波射電天文學的終結(jié)。

While the researchers' finding is tantalising, sadly we can't currently detect such black-hole-hosted planets. Nevertheless, this research could one day lead to an entire new way of discovering alien worlds - and they might be quite a sight to behold.

雖然研究人員的發(fā)現(xiàn)很誘人，但遺憾的是，我們目前還無法探測到這種黑洞行星。盡管如此，這項研究總有一天會帶來一種發(fā)現(xiàn)外星世界的全新方式——它們可能會成為一道亮麗的風景線。

The research has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

這項研究發(fā)表在《天體物理學雜志》上。