@sundogplanets Congratulations! Your work to make people aware of this issue is really starting to pay off. Thank you!

@[email protected] men in black roach guy voice MORE

Had a nice weekend focused on small things I can actually make better. Picked the last of the carrots, fed lots of carrots, old apples, and pumpkins to the animals, had an evening out stargazing with friends.Of course, there were a truly stunning number of satellites - I saw THREE Starlink trains, and I'm not even sure how to quantify how ridiculously many sats there were - way more than 10% of visible stars close to zenith (which was my horrifying prediction from a few years ago. Fuck.)

I almost skipped it because it's so emotionally draining and because the Sask Party (the local awful oil-supporting conservatives) just won again, but I just did my climate change lecture. Tried to tie it in more to the "homeostatic awakening" idea for solving the Fermi Paradox - civilizations have to use much less energy than we do in order to survive long-term, and then they're undetectable (by our current methods). It's a weird kind of hope, but it's something.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2022.0029

Just had to double check that I wasn't accidentally going to point the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope at Uranus. And then just about died laughing, because Uranus is always funny, even if you're a professional astronomer. https://globalnews.ca/news/9135592/uranus-probe-names/

@TheJen @sundogplanetsTheJen's reply is how I feel too.

@sundogplanets I am so sorry you have to continue with that man leading the province with that party. But I hope at least that the surge of the NDP is a sign of things to come.

@sundogplanets Yep... imaging with the U of C Baker-Nunn in August. 22 images taken, 7 usable without satellite intrusion.

@woozle @sundogplanets A tax wouldn't really punish big companies, they could afford to pay it, but smaller companies (and competitors) wouldn't necessarily be able to. Satellite counts need to be LIMITED (not satellites taxed) and with every satellite deployed they need a concrete plan for after it's obsolete (i.e. a way to collect it or re-use it so it doesn't burn up in the stratosphere and damaging the ozone)

@sundogplanets @kevinrjYeah. There are those moments that really, really make an instructor wonder.A conclusion I’ve come to over the years about teaching: “It’s not about you, Paul.” Even when it is about me — my teaching, my policies, my behavior — it’s not about me. Whatever the hell is going on with those students, I guarantee it’s not about you!

Oh gosh and it's Sask election day too, so I'll be checking for count updates alllll day... come on Saskatchewan, please be just a little bit less racist and transphobic than usual...

That was one of the most depressing meetings I've ever attended (space debris committee). A Chinese upper rocket stage exploded in LEO, a huge US sat exploded in GEO, and a SpaceX Crew Dragon just reentered and it's trunk will dump many potentially lethal debris pieces on the ground. AST SpaceMobile dumped a bunch of debris in LEO while unfurling their fucking huge direct-to-cell sats.And then all the Americans on the call said they were moving in with me if the election goes badly

@sundogplanets But Doctor, you ARE Pagliacci!

@sundogplanets How big is the Sun?Edit: Thinking it should be about 1cm, the size of a pea.1AU=149,597,870 Sun Diameter(D)=1,400,000So 1,400,000/149,597,870 = .0094 If 1AU is 1M then .0094 M a little less than 1CM Earth would be 6.684587153547039e-9 * 1M So pretty small

Oh wow, the Europa Clipper launched *a week ago* and I completely missed it! SpaceX really did completely and totally kill any excitement I had for space launches.

After absurd travel, I am back at home after advocating to anyone who would listen at the UNOOSA workshop for fewer satellites with longer operational lifetimes. I had a lot of great chats and got my point across very well. But I also saw the frantic pace of future sat launches.As we turned onto my rural road, and I finally saw my gorgeous prairie skies again, what was there to greet me? A FUCKING STARLINK TRAIN. I can't express how angry that made me.I will keep fighting. I have to.

Interesting. I guess all the negative press from SpaceX dumping large pieces of garbage on Saskatchewan did actually make a difference? https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-move-dragon-splashdowns-back-to-west-coast/Of course, they still plan to dump large pieces of garbage upon reentry (plus huge amounts of atmospheric pollution on both launch and reentry), but now the garbage pieces will go directly into the ocean, far away from annoying astronomers who have lots of journalist contacts. Sigh.