3225: Satellite Pollution

Satellite Pollution

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Title text: We're working to make sure the images are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, with a minimum number of sponsored galaxies.

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Explanation

This is one of 65 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently by a SATELLITE BOT SHOWING A FAKE XKCD COMIC. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

A common concern with new satellite constellations like Starlink is that the fact that they rely on large numbers, they make ground-based astronomy more difficult by adding more noise, such as disruptive satellite flare producing something like star trails during normal observations. They may also possibly obscure targets, though as the background stars (or even most other astronomical objects) is greatly outpaced by most examples of artificial satellite (especially those in low Earth orbit), this would be a momentary occultation at best, and longer term observations should at least give some opportunities to salvage some decent data.

This comic satirizes the two by talking about a hypothetical satellite company that knowingly launches inaccurate star maps to be overlaid across the night sky. This would not only obscure a fair amount of stars from view, but also show stars that don't actually exist in the night sky, thus providing confusion for astronomer.

Of course, such a plan would have many problems in implementing, such as the pure size and strength needed for the banner to survive in space while being large enough to be noticed by casual observers. Also, the banner would need to have its own light source, powerful enough to be seen from earth. Depending on the distance the banner is from the earth, it would be easy to make lights capable of being visible from our planet. See the laser pointer "What-If".

One explanation for why anyone would do this is in the title text which implies that the company is somehow offering sponsorship to certain galaxies, despite galaxies not being known for being sentient, or able to provide a sponsorship. It is unclear how exactly these sponsorships are being done, possibly doing banners to advertise certain galaxies, though what for is unknown. Possibly to encourage people to visit the various sponsored galaxies, although many of them would be incredibly far away and unreachable by current space travel.

This comic may have a connection to the "collapse" of Google Image Search, where trying to find a real picture of a historical event or scientific phenomenon will now produce an overwhelmingly intrusive quantity of results produced by generative AI and easily mistaken as fact.

Transcript

[White Hat and Ponytail are standing on the left, Cueball is on the right, in front of a poster on the wall. The poster has a portion of the Earth at the bottom, with outer space above it. The space scene has lots of stars, along with a few nebulae and galaxies. Part of the space scene is enclosed in a quadrilateral (apparently a rectangle skewed by perspective) which is attached at the middle of its left side to a much smaller object.]

Ponytail: Aren't you worried these will be disruptive for ground-based astronomy?

Cueball: No, why?

[Caption below comic:]

My new company is being criticized for our satellites that deploy 100-mile-wide banners painted with inaccurate pictures of the night sky.

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Discussion

I'm surprised this isn't Black Hat's operation RDiMartino (talk) 21:34, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

He created the company, Cueball is Marketing. Barmar (talk) 21:49, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Space mirrors have been in the news lately. 2603:8081:9700:1224:0:0:0:3 03:50, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

As explained in https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ this wouldn't work anyway since the banner would be moving at 7.8 km/s, or else it would need to be hung from a space-elevator-like counterweight located beyond GSO. If cueball accomplishes THAT kind of feat, I think the astronomers would be more impressed than annoyed. 2A02:590:121B:4001:9505:CE66:9EEB:2974 21:42, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

Geo-stationary orbit would work though Tanner07 (talk) 14:14, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

For reference, the quoted 100 miles width at GEO/GSO would roughly span the Moon"s radius (not even its diameter, which is the usual rule of thumb for "how big all other things in the sky look"), so would seem to be on the lower edge of being useful for bringing 'better' views of the sky it obscures (with and without advertising) to the casual Mk-1 Eyeball observer of the universe. Thus it can only really be 'useful' to the astronomers that it's in reality inconveniencing.

Though if set at ISS level of orbit, 100 miles would be ~45 Moon-widths, slightly narrower than a paperback book held at arm's length (if I'm cross-converting my trigonometry correctly), which would conceivably have some public primary purpose, upon which the secondary purpose of making it look like the stars it is also obscuring (give or take its rapid journey across the starfield, and mis-parallaxing issues unless it has very sophisticated 'observer-adaptive' optics to directly counter this effect) might be a mitigation/sop to astronomers like the minor rejig of Starlinks was to reduce their flare-profiles. 82.132.239.130 11:43, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

7.8 km/s isn't that fast though, when viewed from down here on the surface. I love going outside in the evening to watch the ISS go by: it doesn't zoom past in the blink of an eye, it takes a few minutes to pass overhead. That's plenty long enough for a banner to be in view and to get a good look at it. If there are a couple of hundred banners in LEO you'll have lots of opportunities to see them. The real issue is power: during most of the night the banners will be completely dark because they are in Earth's shadow. How will they be illuminated? If the goal is to show fake stars, the banner will need powerful floodlights installed as "stars", so what is powering the floodlights? Martin (talk) 22:23, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

I do wonder if this is in reference to results in search engines, given the "sponsored galaxies", and the tendency to provide fake results at the top for many engines 2806:2a0:b2e:8322::edc (talk) 13:34, 30 March 2026 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I am reminded of an Arthur C. Clarke story, I think it was Watch This Space, part of a series set on the first moonbase. As scientific experiment involving a cloud of glowing atoms is sabotaged to produce an advertising slogan. Coca Cola is implied but never named.--2A00:23CC:D248:8901:5D76:61B5:C315:E67A 08:05, 31 March 2026 (UTC)
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