I\u2019ve always found a fascination with the night sky \u2013 there\u2019s something incredibly calming about standing under the stars with a camera. But a growing number of points of light that I see in the sky aren\u2019t even stars at all, which is why this photo grabbed my attention.<\/p>\n
Alan Dyer<\/a> captured this photograph last summer to illustrate how many satellites cross the night sky in a 30-minute time span. The image is a composite, which means that the photographer left his camera shooting for about 30 minutes and blended all the light trails together, so unlike a typical astrophotography shot that\u2019s only a few seconds long, Dyer\u2019s photo represents 30 minutes of the night sky.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n While this photo is from 2025, it captured my attention because last week, StarLink launched its 10,000th satellite<\/a>. Proposed AI data centers based in space<\/a> and a satellite system to project sunlight to solar power centers <\/a>could make the night sky even more crowded, making the image even more relevant.<\/p>\n Article continues below <\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n One of the astrophotography tips<\/a> that I\u2019ve always found most helpful is to find a more remote location away from city lights. I can photograph far more stars, even occasionally the Milky Way band, when I\u2019m camping out in a remote location.<\/p>\n But the growing number of satellites in the night sky is creating light pollution even in the few places far enough away from city lights on the ground. Satellites create streaks of artificial light across the night sky. They\u2019re often confused for shooting stars, but satellites are usually white or bluish-white, while meteors tend to be more colorful.<\/a><\/p>\n In a 2025 survey of more than 200 astrophotographers<\/a>, 90 percent of them reported a moderate or higher impact from satellites. Photographers reported spending an extra 27 minutes on image editing to remove the impact of satellites on the image, or an average of 16 discarded photos from every night sky session.<\/p>\n The survey predicted that 25,000 satellites would be the \u201cbreaking point\u201d when astrophotography would be irreparably harmed. As of January 2025, an estimated 15,000<\/a> satellites are in orbit.<\/p>\n The data is disheartening for someone who finds peace photographing the night sky. But, one thing I\u2019m taking away from Dyer\u2019s photograph? The time you photograph the night sky matters, particularly for satellites. Low-orbit satellites are most visible for a few hours after sunset and before sunrise, as the satellites are still reflecting sunlight during this time.<\/p>\n Avoiding that time frame can help avoid some of the impact of satellites. Near the summer solstice and at higher latitudes, however, satellites are visible in the night sky much longer.<\/p>\n You may also like<\/p>\n Browse the best tripods<\/a> to get steady shots of the stars. Or, take a look at the best cameras for astrophotography<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve always found a fascination with the night sky \u2013 there\u2019s something incredibly calming about standing under the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-356529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}