Alexandre Amorim and Brad Young have reported numerous bright flares of Starlink satellites during the past ten days. The celestial geometry of the brightest events, which range from -3 to -8 magnitude, are fairly consistent. The most striking aspect is that the azimuth of the satellite is approximately equal to that of the Sun in most cases. This geometry suggests that the flares are due to specular reflection of sunlight from the nadir-facing side of these flat-panel shaped satellites. The picture titled 'Antennas' at the SpaceX web site Starlink.com appears to show several such reflective areas on the nadir side. Tony Mallama _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Fri Apr 17 2020 - 12:06:25 UTC
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