<blockquote>
  <p>Has a plan or strategy been outlined or established to reduce the number of bright satellite trails that appear in LSST perpetual sky surveys, and/or to process images to remove the trails or at least flag pixel regions that contain likely trails?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Indeed LSST will be very affected by satellites in LEO. The strategy is to make several observations of the same area to have enought data to cover for the regions photobombed by the satellites and the artifacts generated by them in the sensor.</p>

<p>From the <a href="https://www.lsst.org/content/lsst-statement-regarding-increased-deployment-satellite-constellations" rel="nofollow noreferrer">LSST webpage</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>The first group of Starlink satellites are sufficiently bright during dawn and dusk (when LSST would be surveying) that the trail would exceed sensor saturation, generating uncorrectable artifacts in the data. If instead these satellites were painted flat black making them a factor of 25 fainter, satellite trails should be less of a challenge for LSST due to its specific design.In that case LSST's frequent imaging of the same region of sky will provide enough data to correct for unsaturated satellite trails or other anomalies.</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-02T12:30:35.000Z
Excellent! Thanks for the speedy answer. fyi I've just asked [Is it feasible to paint SpaceX Starlink satellites black so as not to frequently saturate the CCDs of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope?](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/39165/12102)
uhoh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-21T01:10:27.563Z
This only seems to say that *IF* Starlink satellites were to be colored black, then they could handle it.  It doesn't seem to say what they can or will do about existing satellites or if such coloring is not done.
zibadawa timmy
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-02T11:30:04.763Z
2019-10-02T11:30:04.763Z
Swike
<p><strong>update:</strong> From Nature.com News article: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03446-y" rel="nofollow noreferrer">SpaceX launch highlights threat to astronomy from ‘megaconstellations’</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>But an upcoming, cutting-edge telescope could be in bigger trouble.</strong> The US Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will use an enormous camera to study dark matter and dark energy, asteroids and other astronomical phenomena. It will survey the entire visible sky at least once every three nights, starting in 2022. Because the telescope has such a wide field of view, satellites trailing across the sky could affect it substantially, says Tony Tyson, an astronomer at the University of California, Davis, and the LSST’s chief scientist.</p>
<p>He and his colleagues have been studying how up to 50,000 new satellites — an estimate from companies’ filings with the US government — could affect LSST observations. <strong>Full results are expected in a few weeks, but early findings suggest that the telescope could lose significant amounts of observing time to satellite trails near dusk and dawn.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<p>In the 2011 Sixty Symbols video <a href="https://youtu.be/ETt_l0MiXAo?t=100" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Spy Satellites (from Deep Sky Videos)</a> after about <code>01:40</code> amateur astrophotographer Nik Szymanek says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One thing I find when I’m out here imaging, by pointing the telescope at that part of the sky sort of south east at this time of night (early evening) there does seem to be a lot of satellites picked up by these images, and even on this 60 second exposure you can see we’ve got another satellite image there.</p>
<p>Well I mean satellites can be a problem for a deep sky imager in that <strong>if you’re using a telescope that has quite a wide field of view and you’re taking fairly long exposures, like five minutes or ten minutes, then at some point during that exposure it’s quite likely a satellite will be recorded passing in front of the image.</strong></p>
<p>In fact a recent image that I’ve taken of the Andromeda galaxy with a refracting telescope actually recorded five satellite trails in a five minute exposure, so that gives you a good idea just how crowded the skies are with all these satellites are in orbit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To me &quot;using a telescope that has quite a wide field of view... taking fairly long exposures like five or ten minutes...&quot; is a good description of how the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Synoptic_Survey_Telescope" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Large Synoptic Survey Telescope</a> (main <a href="https://www.lsst.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">site</a>) will operate. Granted the exposures may be closer to 15 seconds than 5-10 minutes, but on clear nights it will be imaging almost continuously for high throughput. The FOV is about 3.2 degrees, so &quot;wide field&quot; applies.</p>
<p><strong>Question:</strong> Has a plan or strategy been outlined or established to reduce the number of bright satellite trails that appear in LSST perpetual sky surveys, and/or to process images to remove the trails or at least flag pixel regions that contain likely trails?</p>
<p>Nearly every satellite and other large object in low Earth orbit is catalogued and it's position versus time can be predicted to a few kilometer accuracy (7km/400km is about 1 degree for example) and the object being in sunlight or dark can be likewise calculated, so one could conceivably adjust the exposure sequence to avoid some of the brighter ones and predict where they are likely to appear in data. So I'd be surprised if nobody has addressed this in a formal way yet.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/Q3ksm.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/Q3ksm.jpg" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/BMXHy.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/BMXHy.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a>  LSST from <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Large_Synoptic_Survey_Telescope_3_4_render_2013.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a></p>

<photography><artificial-satellite><vera-c-rubin-observatory>
What is the LSST's plan to address frequent satellite trails in data?
uhoh
# What is the LSST's plan to address frequent satellite trails in data?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-09-30)

**update:** From Nature.com News article: [SpaceX launch highlights threat to astronomy from ‘megaconstellations’](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03446-y):

> **But an upcoming, cutting-edge telescope could be in bigger trouble.** The US Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will use an enormous camera to study dark matter and dark energy, asteroids and other astronomical phenomena. It will survey the entire visible sky at least once every three nights, starting in 2022. Because the telescope has such a wide field of view, satellites trailing across the sky could affect it substantially, says Tony Tyson, an astronomer at the University of California, Davis, and the LSST’s chief scientist.
>
> He and his colleagues have been studying how up to 50,000 new satellites — an estimate from companies’ filings with the US government — could affect LSST observations. **Full results are expected in a few weeks, but early findings suggest that the telescope could lose significant amounts of observing time to satellite trails near dusk and dawn.**

---

In the 2011 Sixty Symbols video [Spy Satellites (from Deep Sky Videos)](https://youtu.be/ETt_l0MiXAo?t=100) after about `01:40` amateur astrophotographer Nik Szymanek says:

> One thing I find when I’m out here imaging, by pointing the telescope at that part of the sky sort of south east at this time of night (early evening) there does seem to be a lot of satellites picked up by these images, and even on this 60 second exposure you can see we’ve got another satellite image there.
>
> Well I mean satellites can be a problem for a deep sky imager in that **if you’re using a telescope that has quite a wide field of view and you’re taking fairly long exposures, like five minutes or ten minutes, then at some point during that exposure it’s quite likely a satellite will be recorded passing in front of the image.**
>
> In fact a recent image that I’ve taken of the Andromeda galaxy with a refracting telescope actually recorded five satellite trails in a five minute exposure, so that gives you a good idea just how crowded the skies are with all these satellites are in orbit.

To me "using a telescope that has quite a wide field of view... taking fairly long exposures like five or ten minutes..." is a good description of how the [Large Synoptic Survey Telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Synoptic_Survey_Telescope) (main [site](https://www.lsst.org/)) will operate. Granted the exposures may be closer to 15 seconds than 5-10 minutes, but on clear nights it will be imaging almost continuously for high throughput. The FOV is about 3.2 degrees, so "wide field" applies.

**Question:** Has a plan or strategy been outlined or established to reduce the number of bright satellite trails that appear in LSST perpetual sky surveys, and/or to process images to remove the trails or at least flag pixel regions that contain likely trails?

Nearly every satellite and other large object in low Earth orbit is catalogued and it's position versus time can be predicted to a few kilometer accuracy (7km/400km is about 1 degree for example) and the object being in sunlight or dark can be likewise calculated, so one could conceivably adjust the exposure sequence to avoid some of the brighter ones and predict where they are likely to appear in data. So I'd be surprised if nobody has addressed this in a formal way yet.

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/Q3ksm.jpg)](https://i.sstatic.net/Q3ksm.jpg)

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/BMXHy.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/BMXHy.png) LSST from [here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Large_Synoptic_Survey_Telescope_3_4_render_2013.png)

**Tags:** photography, artificial-satellite, vera-c-rubin-observatory


---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2019-10-02. Score: 4 | Accepted answer

> Has a plan or strategy been outlined or established to reduce the number of bright satellite trails that appear in LSST perpetual sky surveys, and/or to process images to remove the trails or at least flag pixel regions that contain likely trails?

Indeed LSST will be very affected by satellites in LEO. The strategy is to make several observations of the same area to have enought data to cover for the regions photobombed by the satellites and the artifacts generated by them in the sensor.

From the [LSST webpage](https://www.lsst.org/content/lsst-statement-regarding-increased-deployment-satellite-constellations):

> The first group of Starlink satellites are sufficiently bright during dawn and dusk (when LSST would be surveying) that the trail would exceed sensor saturation, generating uncorrectable artifacts in the data. If instead these satellites were painted flat black making them a factor of 25 fainter, satellite trails should be less of a challenge for LSST due to its specific design.In that case LSST's frequent imaging of the same region of sky will provide enough data to correct for unsaturated satellite trails or other anomalies.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Excellent! Thanks for the speedy answer. fyi I've just asked [Is it feasible to paint SpaceX Starlink satellites black so as not to frequently saturate the CCDs of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope?](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/39165/12102)  
> **username_2**: This only seems to say that *IF* Starlink satellites were to be colored black, then they could handle it.  It doesn't seem to say what they can or will do about existing satellites or if such coloring is not done.  

---

