Stayed up late at Big Bend for one picture, left with a new habit

Thea Perez · 2026-09-07T10:15:29.835086+00:00

Last month I drove out to Big Bend National Park with my old DSLR and a cheap tripod, mostly to shoot the Milky Way over the Chisos Mountains. Around 1am I noticed something odd in my first few frames, thin lines of light that I figured were planes until they showed up again and again in the same spot. Turns out they were geostationary satellites, and once I saw them, I could not unsee them. They are so faint that you miss them with your eyes, but the camera catches every single one, and now I spend half my viewing time hunting for those tiny streaks instead of the stars. It made me wonder how many other things in our night skies we just ignore because our eyes are not sensitive enough to pick them up. Has anyone else started noticing satellites in their long exposures and found it changes how they frame a shot, or do you try to edit them out entirely?

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Stayed up late at Big Bend for one picture, left with a new habit | Astronomy Photos - The Community Guide