Position of Astra 28E

lucernarian

Heyas,

At this time of year, when does the sun pass around the spot where Astra 2/Sky is located in the sky? I need a time that's accurate to at least 15 minutes. I know it's not far off 11 AM.

Zaphod

http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=How+to+locate+a+satellite+using+the+position+of+the+sun

lucernarian

Thanks for the link. I put in my details and the sun pass time I'm given is only 9.45 AM. I can't see the sun at that time.

From what I can tell on byte's website, that time is for the compass direction the satellite is in. I need to find out the elevation angle that the satellite's at. Yet I'm afraid that the 9.45 time could also be referring to the angle of elevation. Could anyone please clarify this?

Zaphod

9.45am (Dublin) is when sun's azimuth angle = sat's azimuth i.e. left/right location.

If you continue reading down the "sat calculations page" you'll see it also gives satellite elevation as 21.475deg while the sun's elevation is 8.633 at 9.45am in Dublin. IOW the sun will be 13deg lower than sat at 9.45am.

Usually you can set the approx elevation using the marking on the dish mount.
http://bytelive.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=How+to+align+a+satellite+dish

watty

Only at Spring & Autumn equinox is the Sun at same height (elevation) as the Satellites.

lucernarian

That's brilliant. Thanks for the help!

Sponge Bob

use this proggie

http://www.smw.se/SMWLink.htm

JHMEG

Funny, I posted this twice in this forum in the last week.

10am is good enough. If your dish is mounted on a perfectly vertical surface there will be graduations on the back of it for elevation. 21 degrees iirc.

You don't need to be absolutely 100% spot on for it to work. The margin of error can be quite large.