Elsewhere on AB there is an interesting discussion on the impact of satellites. https://www.astrobin.com/forum/c/astrophotography/other/is-starlink-ruining-your-astrophotography-experience/
My own take on this is that two other scourges of the anthropocene; namely light pollution and climate change are likely to have a much bigger effect.
LP is clearly a major issue, with recent research demonstrating and average 8% per annum increase in LP across the world.
This was a beautiful piece of work, using observations of star visibility from people around the world over a decade or more.
However, to my knowledge, I am not sure if the same thing has been done for the impact of climate change, measured e.g. through the amount of time observing is not possible due to cloud/humidity. One could also invoke smoke from wild fires, another symptom of climate change.
It would need a very good sample of rigorously kept observing logs from a number of people over a large number years, but AB might be the best place to start in seeing whether such a data base exists or can be created.
[Professional observatories will also keep such records, but accessing may be hard as much will be analog. My money is on the amateur community - or at least a small fraction of it - to have kept better records of this sort of information. ]
Would love to hear peoples thoughts/experiences. I have only been in my location doing AP for 3 years, by this year we had our first ever inversion layer in the valley [at least in living memory] wiping out much of the long nights in June and July.
My own take on this is that two other scourges of the anthropocene; namely light pollution and climate change are likely to have a much bigger effect.
LP is clearly a major issue, with recent research demonstrating and average 8% per annum increase in LP across the world.
This was a beautiful piece of work, using observations of star visibility from people around the world over a decade or more.
However, to my knowledge, I am not sure if the same thing has been done for the impact of climate change, measured e.g. through the amount of time observing is not possible due to cloud/humidity. One could also invoke smoke from wild fires, another symptom of climate change.
It would need a very good sample of rigorously kept observing logs from a number of people over a large number years, but AB might be the best place to start in seeing whether such a data base exists or can be created.
[Professional observatories will also keep such records, but accessing may be hard as much will be analog. My money is on the amateur community - or at least a small fraction of it - to have kept better records of this sort of information. ]
Would love to hear peoples thoughts/experiences. I have only been in my location doing AP for 3 years, by this year we had our first ever inversion layer in the valley [at least in living memory] wiping out much of the long nights in June and July.
