Subtractive trail removal
Erase satellite trails.
Keep every star.
One plane or Starlink streak can ruin a frame. Stupid Satellites finds the trail, models its light, and subtracts it — so the stars sitting right on top of the trail stay exactly where they were. Nothing is painted in. Nothing is invented.
Free at launch · works as a Lightroom “Edit In” editor · your photos never leave your computer.
Real frame at 1:1 — three trails removed, the starfield untouched. Drag to compare.
Watch it work
Satellites and planes are different beasts.
It removes both.
A satellite writes one continuous streak. A plane writes a streak plus a row of blinking navigation strobes — compact flashes that look exactly like stars to most tools. The engine proves the flashes sit on a precise timing lattice (electronics blink on a clock; stars don't), so the lamps are removed and your stars are left alone. Below: the actual detector's measurements on one real frame, replayed.
Live replay of measured telemetry — trail endpoints, σ scores, and all 14 strobe flashes come from running the real pipeline on this frame.
The whole frame
Stacking can't save a single exposure. This can.
Rejection during stacking needs many frames. When you have one keeper with a trail through it, your options are clone-and-pray or throw it out. Subtraction gives you a third: remove the streak, keep the shot.
How it works
Detect · validate · subtract · keep the stars
Find the trail
A rotation-scan detector locks onto straight streaks — satellites, planes, even dashed strobe lights — and scores each against the frame's own noise floor.
Prove it's real
Every candidate is validated against an empirical noise null, so faint sky structure and star chains don't get mistaken for trails.
Subtract the light
The trail's brightness is modeled along its length and subtracted — pixel = sky + stars + trail, minus the trail. Only unrecoverable cores are filled, from real neighbouring sky.
Stars survive
A star sitting on the streak is added back by the subtraction itself. Losing a star under a trail is acceptable; inventing one never is.
Why this one
Built for pixel-peepers
Stars on the trail are kept
Star-removal tools erase your stars along with the streak. Subtraction keeps them — reviewed at 1:1, not a downsampled preview.
Single frames welcome
No stack required. One exposure, one trail, one clean result — and batch mode when you have more.
Lightroom round-trip
Register it as an “Edit In” external editor. Send a 16-bit TIFF, clean it, save straight back into your catalog.
Private & lossless
Everything runs locally — zero network calls. 16-bit output with your EXIF and colour profile preserved; pixels outside the repair are byte-for-byte identical.