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Shortly after the launch, before full orientation of the solar panels and raising of the orbits, the Starlink satellites were surprisingly bright and easily seen with the naked eye.
Back then, I heard many say that, in order to evaluate their final impact on astronomy and the night sky, one had to wait for the satellites to reach their final orbits.

As most of them have reached their final height of 550 km by now, I ask myself how this turned out:

Did they become dimmer? By how much? Do they flare, and how long after sunset are the flares visible?

SpaceBread
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  • Update on future satellites: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/eaxysu/spacex_to_make_starlink_satellites_dimmer_to/?utm_source=reddit-android – Magic Octopus Urn Dec 15 '19 at 13:31

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The only source I have found says the magnitude is around 6, which is pretty typical of a satellite of the size and distance from Earth. What I speculate happened was that the orientation of the solar panels right after launched caused a flare to be seen from the ground, which was quite a bit brighter than a typical satellite. It was even more noticeable as the satellites were very close to each other. It seems in their final orbit the damage is minimal.

PearsonArtPhoto
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  • Heya, don't know what you want to do with: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/38561/has-spacex-made-any-commentary-on-starlink-posing-a-threat-to-astronomy but this kind of covers my question as well. Unless you see the distinction of "SpaceX has made public statement X". – Magic Octopus Urn Oct 10 '19 at 20:23
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    Thanks. I also found this Twitter post, measuring sth between 4-6 mag: https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1166558337288298496 Which, apparently, is still bright enough to saturate the LSST detectors: https://www.lsst.org/content/lsst-statement-regarding-increased-deployment-satellite-constellations – SpaceBread Oct 11 '19 at 14:07