Brad (and others interested in Starlink), This paper has the most comprehensive analysis of Starlink magnitudes to date: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.08422 The data points include 276 magnitudes from visual observers as reported on this SeeSat-L site and 554 from the automated observatory MMT-9: http://mmt9.ru/satellites/ The mean visual magnitudes adjusted to a distance of 550 km (the operational altitude) is 4.63 +/-0.02. There is only a weak dependency on phase angle (figure 3) but there is a moderate dependency on the satellite's flat panel orientation relative to the Sun and the observer (figure 4). Much of the scatter of the magnitudes appears to be due to orientation as evidenced by observations from several sources. For example, Jay Respler's commented “there were 4 pairs [of satellites] with second following first by several seconds. In each case the first was mag 4-6. The second was 2-3 mags brighter” (http://www.satobs.org/seesat/Mar-2020/0126.html). These satellites were at the operational altitude and differing orientations is a likely explanation for the large brightness variations. Tony Mallama _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Fri Jul 03 2020 - 11:39:06 UTC
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