Can you locate Geosynchronous Satellites with a telescope?

Question

I have seen satellites come through my view when observing with a telescope, but they move way too fast for me to track.......so I am curious if I could somehow locate a Geosynchronous one and observe it. Has anyone ever pulled this off?

Answer 1

I have the perfect way for you.
Buy yourself the starry night space software. you put in your location and it will show you the night sky. If you forward it you will see a dot move faster than the stars do . Pause it then right click and it will how you which one it is.

I do this in the daytime and write down what star it will pass by and what time. just before the time I put m telescope view where it should pass and it will whizz by.

This is what I reccomend (your choice of course) ..
http://store.starrynightstore.com/cpack2006.html

If you decide to purchase it and you need extra help finding them etc just find me on my site below.

Answer 2

Go to http://www.calsky.com/cs.cgi/Satellites/10?, you'll have to enter your latitude and longitude as accurate as you possibly can.

Then you can make star maps of the geostationary satellites that are visible.


Geostationary satellites are very dim, however, only 12th magnitude. You'd need a large telescope to see them, from 3.5 to 25 inches depending on light pollution. Probably at least 8 or 10".

Even though the satellites don't move, the sky does, so it might be tricky to find them by star-hopping, the stars will run past the satellites a whole 1 degree in 4 minutes.

They aren't exactly at the celestial equator either, due to parallax.

Geostationary sats are very far away -- dozens of times too small to show any detail, you'd just see a star.

If you want you can go to http://www.calsky.com/cs.cgi/Satellites/4? and try to look at the ISS. When it's near the horizon before or after a zenithal pass, it goes as slow as can be (about 10' of arc per second), you might be able to see it's shape for a whole 5 or 10 seconds.


Edit: Geoff says you can satellites with a Dob, with practice that sounds like it might be a good idea.

Answer 3

It's quite easy to track satellites with a good Dobsonian mount; I do it all the time. I find that, while I'm observing other things, a satellite will often pass through my field of view, sometimes a couple of times a night. With the Dob mount, I just start following it, and sometimes have tracked them halfway across the sky. I saw one last night, in fact, but I wasn't using a Dob, so couldn't track it. I've never observed a geosynchronous satellite myself, but I have a friend who does it regularly. The suggestion of using Starry Night is a good one, For geosynchronous satellites, you have to watch close to the celestial equator for satellites which _don't_ move when the stars do.

Answer 4

You would have to know its location before hand or get very lucky in finding it (at least general coordinates). There is way to much sky to locate one with a telescope at random.

Answer 5

Yes you can.

If you google "astrophoto geosynchronous satellites" you will get lots of interesting links.

Answer 6

It can be done if you know precisely where to look, this type of satellite is 25.000 miles above the earth.