A blend of exposures showing all the satellites in a crowded sky from Alberta, Canada.
A blend of exposures showing all the satellites (and a few aircraft) recorded by the camera on a late spring night (June 1-2, 2022) from Alberta, Canada, from where and when satellites are illuminated all night long and can be seen all through the short night. This is looking almost due south. This illustrates the very crowded sky above us now. And likely none of these are SpaceX Starlink satellites, as most of those are now below naked-eye brightness when in their final orbits. The satellites recorded here would have mostly been visible to the naked-eye. Most of the brightest satellites are also polar-orbiting, in north-south paths here. The Space Station did not make any passes this night. A few trails (the colourful ones, made of lots of dots) are from aircraft. And some very short streaks are meteors, or perhaps flaring satellites. The inset shows a blow up of the central area, showing even more satellites, the fainter ones, visible at that greater scale. The field of view of the main image is 120 degrees wide. A slight drift in the tracking motion has made the stars trail slightly. But having the tracker follow the sky means the ground was blurred, as well as sky content such as clouds and light pollution glows. Thus the streaks in the sky. The ground image comes from a single exposure in the middle of the sequence, layered in and masked. Gaps in the satellite trails are from the 1-second interval between exposures.
Size: 6600px × 4276px
Location: Alberta, Canada
Photo credit: © Alan Dyer/Stocktrek Images / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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