File:Eso2004a.jpg

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File:Night sky at ESO's Paranal Observatory around twilight, Eso2004a.jpg
File:Night sky at ESO's Paranal Observatory around twilight, Eso2004a.jpg from Wikimedia Commons

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Image title	This annotated image shows the night sky at ESO's Paranal Observatory around twilight, about 90 minutes before sunrise. The blue lines mark degrees of elevation above the horizon. A new ESO study looking into the impact of satellite constellations on astronomical observations shows that up to about 100 satellites could be bright enough to be visible with the naked eye during twilight hours (magnitude 5–6 or brighter). The vast majority of these, their locations marked with small green circles in the image, would be low in the sky, below about 30 degrees elevation, and/or would be rather faint. Only a few satellites, their locations marked in red, would be above 30 degrees of the horizon — the part of the sky where most astronomical observations take place — andbe relatively bright (magnitude of about 3–4). For comparison, Polaris, the North Star, has a magnitude of 2, which is 2.5 times brighter than an object of magnitude 3. The number of visible satellites plummets towards the middle of the night when more satellites fall into the shadow of the Earth, represented by the dark area on the left of the image. Satellites within the Earth's shadow are invisible.
Date and time of data generation	09:00, 5 March 2020
Software used	Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 (Windows)
File change date and time	15:32, 26 February 2020
Date and time of digitizing	16:53, 19 February 2020
Date metadata was last modified	16:32, 26 February 2020
Credit/Provider	ESO/Y. Beletsky/L. Calçada
Source	European Southern Observatory
Unique ID of original document	xmp.did:5b2e570e-e0b3-d644-a619-793420173bd0
Short title	Areas of the sky most affected by satellite constellations
Keywords	Very Large Telescope
Contact information	https://www.eso.org Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2 Garching bei München, None, D-85748 Germany
Usage terms	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
IIM version	4
JPEG file comment	This annotated image shows the night sky at ESO's Paranal Observatory around twilight, about 90 minutes before sunrise. The blue lines mark degrees of elevation above the horizon. A new ESO study looking into the impact of satellite constellations on astronomical observations shows that up to about 100 satellites could be bright enough to be visible with the naked eye during twilight hours (magnitude 5–6 or brighter). The vast majority of these, their locations marked with small green circles in the image, would be low in the sky, below about 30 degrees elevation, and/or would be rather faint. Only a few satellites, their locations marked in red, would be above 30 degrees of the horizon — the part of the sky where most astronomical observations take place — and be relatively bright (magnitude of about 3–4). For comparison, Polaris, the North Star, has a magnitude of 2, which is 2.5 times brighter than an object of magnitude 3. The number of visible satellites plummets at other times of night when more satellites fall into the shadow of the Earth, represented by the dark area on the left of the image.