By Mary O’KEEFE

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Samantha Lawler wants us to know that someday in the near future our starry night sky – the one on which writers have waxed poetic, that cultures have built monuments to and the one that has fascinated humans since time began – will soon be less of a starry, starry night and more like a moving electronic train of flashing lights.

Lawler is an astrophysicist and a professor at Campion College at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. She was recently one of the authors of a paper in the American Astronomical Society titled, “Visibility Predictions for Near-future Satellite Megaconstellations: Latitudes Near 50 Degrees Will Experience the Worst Light Pollution.”

The opening paragraph states “megaconstellations of thousands to tens of thousands of artificial satellites [satcons] are rapidly being developed and launched. These satcons will have negative consequences for observational astronomy research and are poised to drastically interfere with naked-eye stargazing worldwide should mitigation efforts be unsuccessful.”

In other words, the night sky will soon be full of what will look to the naked eye like artificial moving stars because of the introduction of tens of thousands of low Earth orbit communication satellites.

Lawler grew up in La Crescenta. Her father is a well-known historian and also a columnist for CVW. For years, her dad Mike has shared historical information that does not just entertain but teaches that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In that same vein, Samantha Lawler is ringing the warning bell that if something is not done soon, the sight of stars will be lost with ramifications not only for those who study the stars but also will affect safety conditions on the ground.

“What made me actually get interested in this [study] was moving here to Saskatchewan. Out on these prairies there are huge skies, and it’s so flat here you can see stars from horizon to horizon,” Lawler said. “There is still a little bit of light pollution from the nearest city but its pretty good. I can see the Milky Way from my back door; that is amazing. Growing up in LA, that’s not something you get to see.”

With her updated view, Lawler began to notice more satellites in the sky.

“I started wondering how bad is it going to get. What are these companies [that launch satellites] going to do and can I make a prediction on [how bad night sky visibility will become]?” she said.

In her paper she made a prediction of how many satellites would be launched and what that would mean for Earth.

“I predict there will be up to 200 satellites at once that will go all night,” Lawler said.

She added that 200 may not sound like a lot but only about 4,000 stars are seen with the naked eye.

“So that is significant that one in 15 points in the sky, that you can see with your [naked] eyes, will be moving; that is horrifying to think about,” she said.

What does that mean to us on Earth? Well, it can affect humans several ways. One is culturally.

“Humans have been looking up at the night sky, looking for patterns and [creating] stories, for as long as we’ve been humans. It is one of the most ancient science studies,” she said.

The changing sky will not just affect one country or one area of the Earth but will change the night sky visible from around the world … and stars play an important role in many cultural practices.

“As a research astronomer it will make my job much, much harder especially the type of astronomy that I do,” she said.

Lawler uses big pictures of the sky that are taken with large telescopes trying to find new Kuiper belt objects, which are donut-shaped icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune.

“It will make it harder to find potentially hazardous asteroids as well,” she said.

Asteroids can harm the Earth.

She added in her research she will take a ground-based telescope and point it at a spot in the sky. She collects light four minutes at a time for long exposures.

“I am trying to find really faint objects in the sky; [during] that time many satellites fly through [the telescope frame] and they are millions of times brighter than what I’m trying to find,” she said. “It makes it incredibly difficult.”

Her study will continue but with so many satellites it will take more time to complete, which means more funding will be needed.

In addition, Lawler is concerned about what will happen when there are so many satellites in orbit they begin to collide with each other. She equated these collisions with creating millions of tiny bullets of debris that can speed to Earth.

In the paper, Lawler and the other authors created a model that used 65,000 satellites on the orbits filed by four megaconstellation companies: SpaceX Starlink and Amazon Kuiper (United States), OneWeb (United Kingdom) and StarNet/GW (China).

“We calibrated our simulation to match telescopic measurements of Starlink satellites, since they are by far the most numerous. Starlink has so far made some strides toward dimming their satellites since their first launch, but most are still visible to the naked eye. Our simulations show that from everywhere in the world, in every season, there will be dozens to hundreds of satellites visible for at least an hour before sunrise and after sunset,” Lawler wrote.

While many would argue that these satellites were created for a good cause – for example, to update communication infrastructure allowing more access to information at faster speeds and in more locations globally – what can be done about the starry sky pollution that Lawler is concerned about?

Lawler first wants people to realize that these companies are changing the night sky for profit and, when consumers have a choice, to take this into consideration.

She would also like to see some type of regulation.

At present, she said, there is little to no real regulation on not only what goes into orbit – but also what will happen if and when it comes back down.