I am using my planetarium program to see if the orbital altitude of the geosynchronous satellites listed in the program match with what I saw on the Net was the appropriate distance for them to have a 24 hour orbital period. I compared their distances with calculations made at this site http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/rocket_sci/orbmech/vel_calc.html and get a close match. Does the orbital period need to be exactly 24 hours? As an experiment I tried stepping ahead in time a day at a time. What I saw was very peculiar. Within a year or two a lot of the satellites that I saw generally south of my position of 92 degrees W longitude began to congregate directly south of me. Is this a phenomenon that would occur if the satellites did not compensate via onboard propellant? Tom Iowa USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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