NASA survey

NASA is trying to get an idea how many amateur and professional telescopes are being pointed at the sky at a given time. In their words, they're:

"attempting to calculate the odds of one of these lasers causing injury to make sure the risk has been mitigated to an acceptably low level (e.g. lower than the odds of being injured by a piece of orbital debris from the satellite itself when it reenters Earth’s atmosphere someday, which is another risk we must calculate and mitigate to internationally-agreed-upon acceptably low levels)."

The survey is fun to fill out and is located here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...ewform?c=0&w=1

Great, the ultimate in light pollution. To be blinded at 2 AM looking into the scope at the remote dark site. I have, of course, been very temporarily blinded by meteors and fireflies, but these guys seem to imply something far worse. Lower than the odds of being injured by a piece of orbital debris, when averaged over the entire population. Considering how few observe with large telescopes in the dead of the night the odds for those who do may not be that small.

All the more reason for everyone to participate in the survey.

I wrote an email to the contact listed to ask if the trajectories of the satellites were public information, so that one could develop software to alert visual observers with large telescopes when there is a LIDAR transit. In fact, a good telescope control system might also refuse to slew a telescope to a region where there might be a LIDAR transit in the next half hour.

One of the questions the survey asks is whether we've ever seen a satellite through our telescope fields. I guess this is common experience that it probably happens once or twice during almost every observing session!

Clear Skies

Akarsh

Just completed it. Thanks!

I also replied. These satellites provide very useful information on the earth and its environment. Obviously it is helpful if we do not
get zapped!!
Al