At 11:04 4/04/02, Jonathan T Wojack wrote: >A have another question, though: > >Stars appear to "travel" from East to West from night to night. >Satellites with inclinations of 90.000 degrees and less (there's a term >for this, it's the opposite of "retrograde," but at the moment I can't >remember it....) travel from West to East. Am I correct in thinking that >this does not matter, that the only important detail is the orbital >period? The only geostationary orbit is zero inclination prograde orbit with a period of 1 sidereal day. Orbits whose period is a simple fraction of 1 sidereal day, and are of non-zero inclination should be called geosynchronous, as can 1 day orbits of non-zero inclination. The subsatellite point traces out the same path in latitude longitude for each day. working examples include the GPS satellites and the molniya comsats, and the 3 Sirius comsats providing music for US motorists. Tony Beresford ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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