That’s an absolutely crazy story 🤯 Also what are US secret agencies gonna do about non US based facilities mapping the sky?Could they could force similar procedures on other survey telescopes?
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Me neither. Also wondering how the three day delay impacts transient searches and if that is even useful to do so when other countries are not subjected to the same limitations and could easily find the satellites they want to hide.
I'm super interested in this. Surely the three-day delay is going to cause issues for transient astronomy?
It says they still get the edited images within a minute once the spy satellites are taken out, but couldn't that still remove background objects (eg faint TNOs)?
It’s not ideal but I suppose it’s probably a relatively small fraction of the data. Plus it sounds like the brokers are still getting the transient info pretty quick, just not the immediate images. Frankly most ppl aren’t gonna be looking at the images that quickly for Rubin data anyway
I only have third-hand information about this; our own use was of PanSTARRS pictures for outreach purposes, so not directly affected. I am assuming @astrophysikerin.bsky.social could say more :-)
My understanding is that postage stamp images of everything interesting (i.e. that moved or changed) are going to be immediately available (excepting satellites). What's being embargoed is a HUGE volume of data that no one really needs immediately (i.e. the parts of the sky that *didn't* change).
Yes — a fellow IMPRS PhD student waited forever for the promised data from PanSTARRS. The reason it didn‘t arrive was apparently that the software that should have removed the traces of US spy satellites didn‘t work and therefore security folks didn‘t release the data.
I half remember something about American observatories facing extra restrictions on the use of artificial guide stars that observatories like ESO did not have to deal with.
Correct! Observers using the laser guide star systems on Keck and similar American telescopes must submit their target lists for review by US Space Command in advance. Space Command sends back a list of black out periods when observing that part of the sky is forbidden
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It says they still get the edited images within a minute once the spy satellites are taken out, but couldn't that still remove background objects (eg faint TNOs)?