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Narrowband

Astra 1L + 1KR + 1N and 1M geostationary satellite movement


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I guess this counts as widefield even if the object isn't that far away from Earth in the grand scheme of things!

I've wanted to capture the movement of geostationary satellites for some time. Contrary to popular belief most geostationary satellites are actually geosynchronous and exhibit drift due to anomalies in Earth's gravitational field and the influence of the Moon. If you could image them for 24 hours they would move in a figure-of-eight motion and station. Station keeping fuel is used to control the N/S and E/W movement (as viewed from Earth) so they stay within an acceptable position (usually a box defined by the beamwidth of the reception dishes/antennas), and I believe when they start to run out of fuel just E/W is controlled to keep the period of rotation correct until the N/S movement is too great and a steerable antenna would be needed.

I was hoping to run capture all night but alas cloud arrived about an hour after setup!

1N looks to be moving more than the others so maybe controllers were moving it this evening (the camera and mount were fixed the whole time).

Sorry it is a very big gif (about 30MB) but I've not worked out how to convert to MPEG4 without it looking poor.  

Hopefully others will find this of interest.

534939229_Astra1L1KR1Nand1Mgeostationarysatellites.gif.5f0bd43b07c50e674a2318e0c23477f8.gif

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