26/04/2026
Night Sky Traffic!
This is a 28 minute total exposure showing just how busy our night sky has become. The stars appear as sharp points, while the bright lines criss-crossing the frame are satellites reflecting sunlight as they pass overhead. You’ll notice that I rarely have satellites in my usual night photography, that’s because clever stacking software nicely rejects satellite trails, but this time I decided to leave them in to show the grim reality of low earth orbit. Just look at the density of satellite traffic in under half an hour!
When I started astrophotography 15 years ago, an image like this would probably have shown fewer than 10 satellites. Back then, there was roughly 1,000 active satellites in orbit - now there’s around 15,000.
That growth is starting to change the night sky. Satellites are now a common sight for stargazers. For astrophotographers they’re a huge distraction when producing timelapses.
What might this image look like in 10 years time when the estimates of 40-60 thousand satellites becomes a reality. Scary!
