Astronomer Cliff Johnson from Northwestern University in Chicago also took part in the observations at the Chile observatory.
He told Forbes: “Here we were, we had a second half of the night observing, and then we kind of just see all of these streaks.
“We put two and two together and it was like oh yeah, it’s the train of all the Starlink satellites.”
Astronomers rely heavily on RAW data captured by their telescopes and will fight for every single pixel to study distant galaxies and other celestial bodies.
As manmade satellites more frequently obscure the view from Earth, experts fear the future of ground-based observations is at jeopardy.
Swinburne University astronomer Alan Duffy even told ScienceAlert: “A full constellation of Starlink satellites will likely mean the end of Earth-based microwave-radio telescopes able to scan the heavens for faint radio objects.”
