this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2026
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No Stupid Questions

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With all these pics from the Artemis, including ones from the earth; why don't we see any satellites and other stuff that circles the earth? Are they too small to see at these distances? Still, i would expect some of them to at least glint in the sunlight.

Update; thanks for confirming it's indeed that they are too small to see. Also, i didn't think of the pixels, good point.

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[โ€“] guy@piefed.social 10 points 13 hours ago

Because space is huge and satellites are tiny. It's like why you can't see a football on the ground from a commercial airliner

[โ€“] lurch@sh.itjust.works 5 points 12 hours ago

the pics don't have enough pixels to see them at this distance. they are small fractions of the pixels.

[โ€“] Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 4 points 12 hours ago

They're tiny relative to space. They don't produce any light so on non-backlit shots, you wouldn't see them unless the sun reflected off a surface the right way.

[โ€“] lost_faith@lemmy.ca 2 points 12 hours ago

This guy explains it perfectly Dave McKeegan

[โ€“] TheLunatickle@lemmy.zip 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

They are way to small, space is BIG.

[โ€“] 667@lemmy.radio 7 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Mind-boggling, one has said.

[โ€“] Klear@quokk.au 10 points 15 hours ago

I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

[โ€“] Bougie_Birdie@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

If you get some place you can see the starry sky, sometimes you can pick out satellites. It might look like a small bright star moving across the sky in a straight line.

Sometimes they're just aircraft. I'm not really up on my astronomy, so I'm sure some of them could be other celestial bodies. But I'm pretty sure a satellite appears to move faster than a planet and slower than a shooting star

[โ€“] Papanca@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

Yes, i see them frequently. Planes often have blinking lights and fly lower. And shooting stars are already gone in the blink of an eye. Also, i have an app -Stellarium - that, if in doubt, shows whether they're satellites.

[โ€“] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

The biggest satellite is like what, 30 metres across with solar panels?* Earth's diameter is ~13 000 km, that's 400 000 times larger. A satellite might as well be a grain of sand.

* Biggest unmanned artificial satellite that I could find info on is the Hubble telescope, which is 13m long; its solar panels are not longer than the telescope tube.