re space marketing would be wonderfull because of his doubtfull credibility as an astronomer modern ground based visible light astronomy what these proposed orbiting billboards would upset is already a dying field the ahh perhaps that s why we ve astronomers have just built meter ground based scopes and are studying designs for larger ones seriously though you re never going to get a meter scope into orbit as cheaply as you can build one on the ground and with adaptive optics and a good site the difference in quality is narrowed quite a bit anyway also scopes in low orbit like hubble can only observe things continuously for minutes at a time which can be a serious limitation opacity and distortions caused by the atmosphere itself have driven most of the field to use radio far infrared or space based telescopes in any case a bright point of light passing through the field doesn t ruin observations if that were the case the i sure as hell does if the point of light is half a degree in extent and as bright as the moon have you ever noticed how much brighter the night sky is on a moonlit night thousands of existing satellites would have already done so satelliets might not seem so bright to the eyes but as far as astronomy is concerned they are extremely bright existing satellites are points of light but an advertising sign that appeared as a point would be useless so i rather think these will appear larger than a typical satellite also satellite tracks are ruining lots of plates in the current palomar sky survey frank crary cu boulder what deparment are you in anyway philosophy you obviously are not qualified to speak about astronomy lee r lee hawkins lhawkins annie wellesley edu department of astronomy lhawkins lucy wellesley edu whitin observatory wellesley college ph wellesley ma fax
