Recent sharp increase in satellite trails - Forums

Hi everyone,

over the past few days I’ve suddenly noticed — and it seems I’m not the only one — a sharp increase in satellite trails. With 3- to 5-minute exposures, over the course of two hours there’s barely a single frame that isn’t crossed by at least four or five trails, sometimes even more. They’re not necessarily parallel like when a Starlink train passes; more often they’re intersecting — but clearly left by satellites (unless we’ve been under meteor shower bombardment for days and I missed the memo).
Are you experiencing the same issue or does anyone know why this is happening? Was there a massive satellite launch recently?
Until a couple of weeks ago I’d get maybe three or four affected shots in an entire night — now it’s a total mess…

Ciao,
Carlo

Starlinks form a train only for a couple of days after launch. After that, they gradually spread to their orbits, so they can produce the random trail you're observing.

I see this topic come up from time to time and it always makes me wonder. I think it has a lot to do with your location and where the target is in the sky.

I recently did the Leo-Trio, 43 10-minute subs plus 21 two-minute subs, and just looked at all the subs. I counted a total of 11 satellites and 4 aircraft in
the total 64 exposures. I've done images where I'll see 3 or 4 in a single exposure, it may have just been where I was pointing.

I've never tossed a sub due to satellite trails. Never, ever.

When it occurs, is it shortly after sunset?

When it occurs, is it shortly after sunset?

I noticed that it happens mostly in the first one-two hours of darkness, then the phenomenon seems to diminish as the night goes on

Chris White- Overcast Observatory:
I've never tossed a sub due to satellite trails. Never, ever.

Usually I don't either, but what I'm saying is that these last few nights I've had subs that look like real networks of trails. I'm not talking about the usual classic trail that happens every now and then, but a kind of satellite storm!

Bob Lockwood:
I see this topic come up from time to time and it always makes me wonder. I think it has a lot to do with your location and where the target is in the sky.

I recently did the Leo-Trio, 43 10-minute subs plus 21 two-minute subs, and just looked at all the subs. I counted a total of 11 satellites and 4 aircraft in
the total 64 exposures. I've done images where I'll see 3 or 4 in a single exposure, it may have just been where I was pointing.

As I said in another answer, I am not talking about what is a normal phenomenon that obviously happens often, and that I normally manage in the integration phase. I am saying that in the last nights, regardless of the direction of observation and at the same (obviously) location (therefore from my normal observation position), especially in the early hours of the night, all my subs are massacred by a real network of totally anomalous trails. I am not talking about the usual classic trail that happens every now and then, but of a sort of satellite storm that goes on for at least an hour or two and that, as I said, I am not the only one to have noticed.

There was a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenburg on Monday that had another load of Starlinks. Over a few days after the launch, the satellites at the right time may look like a
storm as they start to spread out. After about two weeks or so, they will be just like all the other Starlinks out there.

When I go really deep with an integration, I'm always amazed by the spider web of satellite trails in the rejection maps. It's wild how much junk there is up there…

I wish I could curse starlink, but it's starlink that all my data is transferred through from my remote site. :-)

It almost seems target dependent. Some targets seem plagued by satellite trails, other objects almost never. Maybe related to the declination??

It is indeed very frustrating when imaging faint objects with very low signal – I generally reject subs with a satellite trail in or near the target, lest the trails not get removed in the WBPP process. Sometimes I lose up to 1 sub in 10. Maybe I'm rejecting unnecessarily, but I haven't taken the time to test.

Dan

Starlink rollouts happen all the time, with something close to 7k in orbit now, another 12k planned within the next few years. I’ve definitely notified a lot more trails but even default WBPP settings seem to handle them well. Sometimes if you check your integration with the STF x2 boost button you can uncover a trace lurking under the background level so if you’re inclined you can adjust settings or remove the subframe but really I don’t bother unless it’s visible during normal viewing

Carlo Paschetto · Jun 18, 2025, 09:17 PM
Hi everyone,

over the past few days I’ve suddenly noticed — and it seems I’m not the only one — a sharp increase in satellite trails. With 3- to 5-minute exposures, over the course of two hours there’s barely a single frame that isn’t crossed by at least four or five trails, sometimes even more. They’re not necessarily parallel like when a Starlink train passes; more often they’re intersecting — but clearly left by satellites (unless we’ve been under meteor shower bombardment for days and I missed the memo).
Are you experiencing the same issue or does anyone know why this is happening? Was there a massive satellite launch recently?
Until a couple of weeks ago I’d get maybe three or four affected shots in an entire night — now it’s a total mess…

Ciao,
Carlo

Well yes, that is the price we have to pay if we want to have internet connection everywhere at any time even when sitting on the Thr…ne 🤣

It is called technical advance in humanity… or civilization.

I know it is annoying but there is no way out

Sad but true as well as the stupid idea of the politicians in my town to install street lamps with very bright LED, like 5000K or 6000K… since then the Light Pollution has risen tremendously

It increased in one single year by nearly 100%

📷 image.png

I haven’t worried about the space junk they are surrounding Earth with for a while now.

They go away in stacking. If anything shows up in my finals I go back and find the culprits, but haven’t done that in a long, long time now.

I think the alternative purpose is to keep alien craft away. Just wait until all the junk falls back onto us.

For the first time in seven years, I feel like this is becoming a very real issue.

I recently imaged M42 and saw a couple of satellite trails that WBPP could not reject, no matter the settings used (aggressive clipping, even median weighting). Inspecting the frames, it became clear that this was not just one frame with a satellite, but multiple faint ones which, when stacked, actually emphasized rather than rejected the trail.

The ultimate solution was to add a set of images from a completely different session a couple weeks later.

Hi,

All those internet service companies ignored professional astronomers appeals

https://astronomersappeal.wordpress.com/

and so what can we amateur astronomers do against the greed of this companies, especially Elon Musk… 🤨

Arun H · Dec 1, 2025, 07:36 PM
For the first time in seven years, I feel like this is becoming a very real issue.

I recently imaged M42 and saw a couple of satellite trails that WBPP could not reject, no matter the settings used (aggressive clipping, even median weighting). Inspecting the frames, it became clear that this was not just one frame with a satellite, but multiple faint ones which, when stacked, actually emphasized rather than rejected the trail.

The ultimate solution was to add a set of images from a completely different session a couple weeks later.

Hi Arun,

Yep, it was a problem in 2015 when I captured these images, as a rank amateur.

https://youtu.be/4tHhWivVmjQ

The rank amateur is apparent in my texts in the short video. And my crude beginners images. Ahh, those were the days!

I just had the OP’s issue imaging M42 a couple a days back. Had to switch to median instead of average and still had to manually select which integration routine and adjust settings in WBPP 3x in order to mitigate the trails which had persisted into the ML’s. Something I have never had to do before to get a good ML. I believe the reason they “go away” after a few hours is probably the position in orbit, the sun and the earths shadow. - that is a guess.

Tim Ray · Dec 2, 2025, 04:26 PM
the sun and the earths shadow. - that is a guess.

This is the issue as Tim mentioned…

and Elon Musk’s promises to make them less reflective was Vapourware …🤬on the other side this was a stu…id proposal as the main problem are the solar panels 🤣

Tim Ray:
I believe the reason they “go away” after a few hours is probably the position in orbit, the sun and the earths shadow. - that is a guess.

I think two effects:

Once the earth moves sufficiently into the Sun's shadow, low orbit satellites will no longer reflect sunlight back.
Over a longer time period (days), the orbits of the satellites with respect to the earth remains the same, but the position of the earth relative to the fixed stars changes, enabling better rejection.

Both of these would suggest that shorter integrations done close to sunset/sunrise would be more prone to the issue. Long integrations, for the reasons above, would help with the rejection algorithm's.

After greater thought to the topic, I believe it is us the astrophotographer that moves further into the night time shadow and away from dusk or once again in the morning when we approach dawn that the satellites are more prone to reflect sunlight back towards earth… With that said. I rely on Starlink for internet. My location has no other alternative other than Starlink. Do I wish these cube-sats were less of an issue, of course. I also believe that somewhere out in the Universe there is someone much smarter than me creating a PI utility which will have the functionality of a BXT that will remove these trails in our ML’s. Software always comes to the rescue.

I have just spent a week observing in a bortle 1 sky with a great south view. I set up a time-lapse after noticing a few satellite trains late in the evening. As the night progressed, these low, bright satellite trains seemed to move around the southern horizon from west to east. These were not faint 3-5th-magnitude trails but 0-2 magnitude, with one attaining about -4. This particular time-lapse was shot between 1 and 2 am. The timelapse was shot with a Nikon Z9 and the Laowa 35mm 0.95 lens with a 3-second exposure at 0.95 aperture and ISO6400. Dsc 4800.mp4

Andrew Murrell · Dec 3, 2025, 07:37 AM
I have just spent a week observing in a bortle 1 sky with a great south view. I set up a time-lapse after noticing a few satellite trains late in the evening. As the night progressed, these low, bright satellite trains seemed to move around the southern horizon from west to east. These were not faint 3-5th-magnitude trails but 0-2 magnitude, with one attaining about -4. This particular time-lapse was shot between 1 and 2 am. The timelapse was shot with a Nikon Z9 and the Laowa 35mm 0.95 lens with a 3-second exposure at 0.95 aperture and ISO6400. Dsc 4800.mp4

Hi Andrew,

Excellent imaging!

That would make a great presentation for reducing or stopping this ridiculous pace of satellite placements. Really, what is the reason for so many and more to come?

All that junk is going to fall eventually.

SonnyE · Dec 3, 2025, 03:13 PM
Andrew Murrell · Dec 3, 2025, 07:37 AM
I have just spent a week observing in a bortle 1 sky with a great south view. I set up a time-lapse after noticing a few satellite trains late in the evening. As the night progressed, these low, bright satellite trains seemed to move around the southern horizon from west to east. These were not faint 3-5th-magnitude trails but 0-2 magnitude, with one attaining about -4. This particular time-lapse was shot between 1 and 2 am. The timelapse was shot with a Nikon Z9 and the Laowa 35mm 0.95 lens with a 3-second exposure at 0.95 aperture and ISO6400. Dsc 4800.mp4
Hi Andrew,
Excellent imaging!
That would make a great presentation for reducing or stopping this ridiculous pace of satellite placements. Really, what is the reason for so many and more to come?
All that junk is going to fall eventually.

https://astronomersappeal.wordpress.com/

Hundreds of professional astronomers signed here ¿and?

BTW amateur astronomers where ignored… or better said Astrophotographers as I wanted to sign and NO NO… 🤬

Andrew Murrell · Dec 3, 2025, 07:37 AM
I have just spent a week observing in a bortle 1 sky with a great south view. I set up a time-lapse after noticing a few satellite trains late in the evening. As the night progressed, these low, bright satellite trains seemed to move around the southern horizon from west to east. These were not faint 3-5th-magnitude trails but 0-2 magnitude, with one attaining about -4. This particular time-lapse was shot between 1 and 2 am. The timelapse was shot with a Nikon Z9 and the Laowa 35mm 0.95 lens with a 3-second exposure at 0.95 aperture and ISO6400. Dsc 4800.mp4

Excellent Firefly show 🤣 sorry, could not resist but it is a real nuisance but the greed prevails … but do not worry, Elon Musk will in a few years file Chapter 11 👍️ hopefully