The geostationairy belt is visible from my latitude at about 30 degrees elevation. Have to point my satellite dish at that elevation for the astra sats at 19 degrees east. Due south it is at about 32 degrees So for Matt fawcett at about a degree more to the north it will be at 31 degrees maximum elevation in the south. A simple aritmatic: The earth axis and the plane of the geosats are at right angles = 90 degrees. Matt is at almost 54 degrees north. So the plane of the geosats is at 90 - 54 = 36 degrees elevation. This is true for the distant stars, and even the sun, but as the geosats are so much closer we see them about 5 degrees to the south of the zero declination. In fact we look down on the geosat plane from our northen latitude. At the equator the geosat plane is at zero declination, but at 90 degrees elevation. Draw a circle with a diameter of 12 cm; put the geosats at 36 cm from the center. The sun is at this scale at a 'distance' of 1500 cm from the center. Drawing a line from the center of the circle to the sun gives you the zero declination plane; and from you latitude of 54 degrees on the circle to the geosats your line of sight to the clark belt. It is then obvious that you see the geosats at lower declination than zero. Greetings and clear, dark skies Leo Barhorst 52.767 N 5.09 E 2 m ASL ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jun 17 2000 - 02:43:53 PDT