026 - Twinkle, twinkle, little satellite

The Skyentists

In this episode of The Skyentists astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez talk about artificial satellites: what are they, where are they, how many are there, what they usually do, and more. Of course the reason of talking about satellites is discussing Space X Starlink satellite constellation, as plenty of conversations have happened in the last couple of weeks about how these objects might affect the view of the night sky for everybody and how they will affect to both amateur and professional astronomical observations. For helping to understand the impact of satellite constellations such Starlink we are interviewing astrophysicist Kyler Khuen, deputy director of technology at Lowell Observatory (Arizona, USA), who has been intensively working on this lately. Many interesting points are raised, emphasising that proper and continue conversations between all stakeholders (private space companies, astronomers, national space agencies, government and law makers) are needed to minimise the impact of satellite constellations. For Space News Ángel briefly presents a new research article that claims to have solved the problem of "the galaxy lacking of dark matter" (main topic in our Episode 8). For "What's Up" we choose a very famous and bright galaxy: M 104, the Sombrero galaxy. More in two weeks!