File:StarlinkTrails Filter 1080.jpg

Summary
Explanation: What are those streaks over the horizon?

New Starlink satellites reflecting sunlight.

SpaceX launched 60 Starlink communication satellites in May 2019 and 60 more in November.

These satellites and thousands more are planned by communications companies in the next few years that may make streaks like these relatively common.

Concern has been voiced by many in the astronomical community about how reflections from these satellites may affect future observations into space.

In the pictured composite of 33 exposures, parallel streaks from Starlink satellites are visible over southern Brazil.

Sunflowers dot the foreground, while a bright meteor was caught by chance on the upper right.

Satellite reflections are not new -- the constellation of 66 first-generation Iridium satellites launched starting 20 years ago produced some flares  so bright that they could be seen during the day. Most of these old Iridium satellites, however, have been de-orbited over the past few years.

Licensing
egonf 7:07 PM (42 minutes ago) to me

Dear Star Traveler,

Sure, the terms of release the image under the CC-by-4.0 is fair. You can use it.

Best regards, Egon

On 19 Dec 2020, at 16:53, Star Traveler  wrote:

Hello Egon,

Would you be willing to release this celebrated photo of yours [1] using a CC-by or similar free license such that it can be incorporated into Wikipedia [2]?

This would enable including the image in pages like this one on light pollution from satellites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare

If you are open to this, you could release it with such a license by posting the image somewhere along with the license statement, or by uploading it to Wikipedia. Uploading to Wikipedia requires that you have an active account in Wikipedia, which can take time to establish, so alternatively, you could reply to this email saying that you release the image under a specific license such as the CC-by-4.0

Thanks for considering this!

- Star Traveler

[1] https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191210.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:File_copyright_tags#For_image_creators

[3] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/