yep. the referenced articles are from this summer. still before the launches

60 satellites were launched on 24 may 2019. It looks like all the articles are after that, in response to people seeing the satellites in the sky.

Here's a 1999 article, well before the announcement of Starlink, talking about the increasing problems of trails spoiling deep sky observations--- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027311779...

> From Table 1 it is clear that since 1985 the annual mean number of trails has risen from 2.5 to 2.9 in a 60 minute exposure, an increase of 16%; the number of spacecraft on orbit has increased by 39% in the same period. Since the trail rate data comes from a set of plates not selected for time of night of exposure, the trail rate is averaged over an entire night. Since trailing is most frequent in the two hours after sunset and before sunrise, it would be expected that the trail rate would not increase as rapidly as the spacecraft population. However, the trend is such that it supports the view that plate trailing is caused by spacecraft and large debris and not by debris more generally. The figures suggest that the satellite population is doubling approximately every 14 years at present launch rates. The concern of the astronomical community is that due to the advent of large satellite constellations such as IRIDIUM and, further in the future, a TELEDESIC network, there will be a sudden increase in the numbers of satellites capable of causing trailing. The time available to find a solution is thereby reduced.

It even foresees SpaceX's "solution" that they are trialing:

> The Space Agencies could also assist by reducing satellite albedos.

It's also discussed in similar terms in "Adverse Environmental Effects on Astronomy", D. McNally, 1992.

You can find early 2000's complaints about Iridium-spoiled optical observations.

You can find late 1960's papers analyzing the impact of satellites on optical astronomy... that point to exactly where we are now.

It's hardly a "surprise to the optical astronomy community." If there's any surprise, it's that people are actually willing to listen to their concerns.

The original assumption, as far as I'm aware, was that Starlink being in such a low orbit wouldn't have these issues that previous satellites had.

That's a bit of a strange assumption. Height doesn't have too great of an impact, other than reaching eclipse from solar illumination a little earlier. Given that Iridium has been a nuisance and they're at 780km, versus Starlink at 550km and 1150km...

A quote from a user above who worked for both SpaceX and the astronomy community:

"Now, that being said, even I was confused why this would cause a problem. The satellites are in low earth orbit, so low that they won't be able to reflect the sunlight, since they are in earth's shadow. Only during twilight and dawn will satellites be in the right position to reflect the sunlight back to the ground off of some panel.

Now, these are not prime observing hours for many people, since it is still not as dark as it could be. So most people point into the darkest parts of the sky (up) rather than at parts where there is still twilight (like nearer the horizon).

But for some types of observations, like near earth asteroids, you want to point into the evening sky to look for them, since that is one of the places you want to look, and the sky conditions should be good enough. In these pictures you'll get streaks of light as the satellites pass through."