I have published an analysis of more than 800 Starlink satellite observations. The mean visual magnitude at a distance of 550 km (the operational altitude) is 4.63 +/-0.02. The data on DarkSat, the low-albedo satellite, indicates that it is fainter than the others by 1.6 magnitudes or 78%. However, there is considerable uncertainty in this value due to the small number of observations. Some satellites were observed to flare by 10,000 times their normal brightness. These statistics can serve as a baseline for assessing the reduced brightness of the VisorSat design for future Starlink satellites. The observations used in this study were acquired by the MMT-9 automated observatory and by these visual observers: Alexandre Amorim, Richard Cole, Russell Eberst, Ted Molczan, Jay Respler, Brad Young and the author. Ted Molczan collected and pre-processed most of the data. Richard Cole and David Skillman read and commented on an earlier version of the manuscript. The paper can be accessed at https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.08422 by clicking 'Download PDF'. Tony Mallama _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Mon Jun 15 2020 - 21:26:37 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Tue Jun 16 2020 - 02:26:37 UTC