Pith Number

pith:V6FLKF6Z

pith:2026:V6FLKF6ZFECW2H73TDQKMWRU3I

not attested not anchored not stored refs pending

Large or bright satellite constellations: Effects on observations, including on the background sky brightness

Olivier R. Hainaut

Proposed satellite constellations with over a million objects or bright reflectors would substantially increase sky background and make trails pervasive in astronomical images.

arxiv:2604.09427 v2 · 2026-04-10 · astro-ph.IM

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Claims

C1strongest claim

The constellations currently proposed for launch, over 1,700,000 objects and including satellites brighter than V_550km = 7, would substantially degrade observations. Maintaining satellite brightness below V_550km = 7 is important for all instruments, but critical for safeguarding saturating instruments, such as the VRO LSST camera and for limiting sky-background pollution. Even under this constraint, the total satellite population must remain below ~100,000 satellites to ensure that field-of-view losses do not exceed typical technical downtime.

C2weakest assumption

The numerical model for Mie and Rayleigh scattering in the V band, adapted from moonlight sky-brightness calculations and validated against observations of moonlight and stellar background light, accurately predicts scattered and diffuse light contributions when combined with the SatConAnalytic package for the satellite populations considered.

C3one line summary

Constellations with over 100,000 satellites or objects brighter than V=7 will substantially increase sky background and trail losses, degrading observations unless strict brightness and population limits are enforced.

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-06-01T01:02:39.205797Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

af8ab517d929056d1ffb98e0a65a34da04fe2f041dbe8d645a6552da76d7c3e9

Aliases

arxiv: 2604.09427 · arxiv_version: 2604.09427v2 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2604.09427 · pith_short_12: V6FLKF6ZFECW · pith_short_16: V6FLKF6ZFECW2H73 · pith_short_8: V6FLKF6Z

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Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/V6FLKF6ZFECW2H73TDQKMWRU3I \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: af8ab517d929056d1ffb98e0a65a34da04fe2f041dbe8d645a6552da76d7c3e9

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "8b687c1a251f75fc3f53fa0f1ce2d17e9461e77cc78debdb7a3bb1922f8f89cd",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "astro-ph.IM",
    "submitted_at": "2026-04-10T15:42:43Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "eedebc7295a07034bde273d5ab08212d750283d60405f9f98172343d4be69d10"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2604.09427",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 2
  }
}