Starlink Flare Hypothesis

From: Anthony Mallama via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2020 13:01:50 -0400
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-l
Received on Fri Apr 17 2020 - 12:06:25 UTC

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Apr 17 2020 - 17:06:26 UTC