Unfortunately there’s more bad news to report on the clear skies front. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center, reports that 73.3% of images the agency’s new SPHEREx space telescope collected between May and September of last year were contaminated by at least one artificial satellite trail. And it’s only going to get worse from here.

Unfortunately this doesn’t come as a surprise. The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) was designed to map the entire sky in near-infrared light. Meaning it would have long exposure times and cover a very large chunk of the visible sky at any one time. Both of which are a recipe for interruption from orbiting satellites.

Typically this type of light pollution is primarily associated with ground telescopes. But, SPHEREx is an orbital satellite, traveling along an orbit that is 700km above the Earth’s surface. Apparently even that wasn’t enough to escape from the light trails. On average there were 2.18 trails per exposure, most of which are concentrated in an “X” pattern that mimics the orbital paths of the satellite megaconstellations.

Fraser discusses the potential limit to how many satellites we can launch.

There appears to be no easy way to handle this interruption, either. SPHEREx uses an automated “sample up-the-ramp” algorithm to protect itself from stray cosmic rays. When a sudden energy blast from one of those rays hits a pixel, the system halts data collection on that pixel to prevent saturation. But commercial satellites are now so bright that they are triggering this system without the help of any stray cosmic rays.

The resultant images have what the authors describe as “railroad” tracks, where the blinding center of the trail is scrubbed out but parallel lines running alongside it are permanently etched into the science imagery. As a result, the images lose the photometric data of anything hidden beneath the rails.

As if that news wasn’t bad enough, SPHEREx isn’t the only one suffering from this fate. A few years ago another team led by Sandor Kruk published a study that found the fraction of Hubble images crossed by satellites rose from 2.8% in the early 2000s to 5.9% in 2021. Admittedly Hubble doesn’t take as wide of shots as SPHEREx, but the fact that one of the most venerable space telescopes still operating is suffering from the same problem is not a good sign.

Fraser discusses the advantages of using ultra-black paint – though that won’t solve all of the contamination issues.

Satellite designers have tried various efforts to mitigate this problem, including dark coatings or specialized visors to reduce their optical brightness. But newer systems, such as direct-to-cell towers or AI data centers, are up to four times larger than existing satellites, eliminating any potential benefit of darker coatings and cementing them as some of the brightest objects in the sky.

And it’s only going to get worse from here. Recent FCC filings have been made to approve up to 2 million satellites in Low Earth Orbit, as compared to the 20,000 or so currently in orbit. If those are approved and launched, simulations from the new paper forecast that 100% of SPHEREx’s images would be polluted by a satellite trail, a significant increase from the current ~73% contamination rate. And the average image would have 189 trails in it.

Needless to say, that is catastrophic for observational platforms below or in the orbital plane where those satellite megaconstellations exist. And various groups have been ringing the alarm bell about this potential catastrophe for years at this point. Unfortunately, there seemingly hasn’t been any movement on coming up with an international agreement to do anything about it. Hopefully this paper will serve as another forcing function to finally do so.

Learn More:

A.S. Borlaff et al – SPHEREx confirms predictions for artificial satellite trail pollution in Low Earth Orbit

UT – Satellites Have Brightened the Skies by About 10% Across the Entire Planet

UT – Satellite Constellations Are Too Bright, Threatening Astronomy and Our Night Sky

UT – Are We About to Permanently Scar the Night Sky With One Million AI Satellite and 50,000 Space Mirrors?

Nithya Raman had 115 days to make her case to Los Angeles voters.

The City Council member made a surprise late entry into the mayor’s race, the last of the major candidates to file for the primary. That left little time for her to form a campaign team, build her name recognition and persuade voters that she would be the best choice to lead the city.

On Monday, the Associated Press called the race, concluding that Raman would have enough votes to make a Nov. 3 runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, the first-place finisher who secured her spot in the showdown last week.

Reality television personality Spencer Pratt, who was in second place on election night, saw his lead over Raman steadily erode as mail-in ballots postmarked as late as June 2 were counted.

On Monday, Raman widened her gap over Pratt to nearly 3 percentage points. Bass had 34.3% of the vote, compared with 28.6% for Raman and 25.8% for Pratt, the latest results showed.

Raman, in a statement, said she was “incredibly honored” by the results, and invited Angelenos who are “frustrated by the broken status quo” to join her campaign.

“For too long, City Hall has prioritized giving political advantage to powerful interests that fund elections. Meanwhile, working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services, and a city that has stopped working for them,” she said.

Raman led Pratt by 21,819 votes, 229,576 to 207,757, elections officials reported Monday evening, with an estimated 148,100 votes countywide still outstanding.

Pratt, a Republican and onetime star of MTV’s “The Hills,” grabbed much of the national spotlight, appearing on “Fox & Friends” and chatting up podcaster Joe Rogan. He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bass strategist Douglas Herman responded to Monday’s results by issuing a broadside against Raman.

“A campaign against Nithya Raman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one Mayor Bass looks forward to winning,” he said in a statement.

Raman spent her time crisscrossing the city, going to dozens of events and zeroing in on renters and younger voters — groups she viewed as her base. Her team also navigated the city’s complex matching funds program, which quickly secured $1.25 million in taxpayer money to power her campaign.

Raman attended nearly 100 community meet-and-greets, her political team said. Those included numerous sessions with restaurant owners, including one in Echo Park, a “Families for Nithya” event in South L.A. and a comedy show at Upright Citizens Brigade.

Pratt “made a lot of noise and did a lot of television and got a lot of social media amplification, while she was out actually campaigning, meeting with voters, canvassing,” said Mike Bonin, a progressive former City Council member who now runs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. “That matters.”

In the end, Raman accomplished two crucial goals: Make herself better known to Angelenos outside her Hollywood Hills-centered district, while framing Pratt as someone whose views were radically out of step with L.A. voters.

While Bass largely floated above the fray, Raman worked to amplify Pratt’s political views, linking them to President Trump and the far right. During a freewheeling debate on NBC4 Los Angeles, she said Pratt — who had been portraying the city as a dystopian hellscape — was offering a “MAGA Republican’s idea of what Los Angeles looks like.”

Raman’s team went much further on social media. In one video, the campaign excerpted Pratt’s interview with an ABC7 Los Angeles reporter, distorting his voice as he claimed that the city’s homeless residents are all drug addicts. That video cut back and forth between images of Pratt and footage of Trump.

In another video, Raman urged voters directly to keep Pratt from making the runoff. Using clips from his appearances on “The Alex Jones Show” — one where he questioned global warming, another where he discussed claims that 9/11 was an inside job — Raman portrayed Pratt as a far-right extremist.

“These are the politics that Spencer Pratt wants to bring to Los Angeles — hatred, fear, conspiracy theorizing, stupidity — the same thing that we’ve seen from the Trump administration,” Raman said. “If his campaign is allowed to continue for even a few more months … it’s going to make this city a lot more hateful and a lot more stupid.”

Pratt repeatedly sought to downplay his party registration, pointing out that the election is nonpartisan. He insisted that his campaign was aimed at Angelenos angry about how the city was being managed, as evidenced by disrepair of city streets and unchecked homeless encampments.

Still, Pratt limited his own appeal by going on Trump-friendly news outlets and doing “Trump performative stuff,” said Mike Murphy, a Los Angeles-based political strategist. Although that type of behavior grabbed attention on social media, it did not resonate with a significant percentage of L.A. voters, he said.

“There was a lot of hype, because he was different, loud and provocative,” said Murphy, a conservative who has advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and many other Republicans. “But a lot of the hype was on the internet, not in the city of Los Angeles voter rolls.”

If Raman was assailing Pratt on the right, she was also fending off an insurgent campaign from the left run by another member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Rev. Rae Huang.

Huang pitched herself as the true progressive in the race, saying Raman had drifted too close to the middle during her time on council.

Raman’s campaign attempted to get Huang to drop out just weeks before the election, saying such a move was needed to defeat Pratt. Huang declined and went public about those efforts.

A;though the push to get Huang out of the race failed, the leftist’s campaign ended up falling flat, securing less than 3% of the vote in the primary.

Leslie Chang, a Raman supporter and co-chair of DSA’s L.A. chapter, said Raman had a sophisticated field operation to reach voters directly, while also relying on influencers and actors on social media to boost her name recognition.

Chang also said DSA’s voter guide, which recommended Raman, played a part in winning over progressive voters who may have considered Huang.

The voter guide recommended Raman, while not formally endorsing her, and questioned Huang’s experience in politics, saying it raised “significant questions on on how she plans to accomplish the specifics of such an ambitious agenda.”

One of the major differences between Huang and Raman’s campaigns was the amount of cash each had on hand to reach out to voters.

Huang’s campaign tried and ultimately failed to receive matching funds from the city, whereas Raman’s campaign unlocked the maximum allowed, $1.25 million.

Raman’s campaign also received contributions from writers and comedians who have made up the council member’s donation base in her previous elections. Her husband, Vali Chandrasekaran, is a prominent television writer.

Raman’s campaign expenditures included $300,000 to Middle Seat, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting business that also worked on the independent expenditure group supporting Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York City.

The company helped the Raman campaign with digital advertising.

While Pratt ran as an outsider, critiquing Bass over her handling of the 2025 Palisades fire and the homelessness crisis, Raman pursued a different lane, saying Angelenos want a well-run city — one where potholes and streetlights are repaired in a timely manner. She also argued that City Hall makes decisions on favors and political expedience, not what’s best for the public.

Her campaign’s slogan reflected that.

During an early conversation with staffers and volunteers, conducted in a back house behind Raman’s Silver Lake home, she said: “We’re trying to build a city that works.”

“Those of us in the room at the time said, ‘That’s it. That’s the slogan for the campaign,’” said Adam Conover, a comedian who volunteered for Raman.

Days later, the campaign was printing the slogan on lawn signs and using it on social media.