Comment by ck2
9 hours ago
good luck if that startup gets to put up hundreds of space mirrors for nighttime daylight
Dr.Becky had a good rant about it this week in the middle of her episode lol
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr52wOlyOaM
her knowledge + enthusiasm is infectious, love it
They're only shining on people who pay for it. I am opposed to light pollution, but reflect is not a threat to anyone who likes dark skies.
That’s easily refuted. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia, references are in the original page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflect_Orbital :
> A peer-reviewed study by the astronomer Olivier Hainaut of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), published in Astronomy & Astrophysics in July 2026 identified Reflect Orbital's planned fleet as the brightest of the roughly 1.7 million satellites proposed by various operators.[18] An observer within a reflected beam would see the satellite shining about four times brighter than the full moon, although outside the beam, the satellite would be roughly as bright as the planet Venus.[18][39] With the full constellation of 50,000 satellites, ESO estimated the night sky would become three to four times brighter overall, and warned that illumination from a single mirror-satellite could ruin an exposure from a camera like that of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
Those mirrors will get so much pushback.
The crazy thing is that we'll all just continue to sit back and let these sort of things happen, only screaming to each other on the internet about it, doing little to nothing.