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Fig. 10.

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Number of illuminated satellites above the horizon as a function of the Sun elevation, for the constellations listed in Table 1 seen from Paranal (latitude ; the dependency with latitude is not strong). The twilights are indicated with blue shadings and the elevation of the sun at midnight by grey shadings for the solstices and equinoxes. The thin dotted lines represent the individual shells and the thick lines the totals for each constellation. The upper thick black line is the grand total. This figure illustrates the importance of the altitude of a constellation: the high-altitude satellites (OneWeb, Kuiper) are visible much longer into the night than lower altitude ones. Also, for most of the night, the much smaller OneWeb constellation contributes to more satellites in the sky than the largest one.

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