Quote:
Originally Posted by pmb1010
Everyone,
coming up on September 23rd is a neat installation tool you can use, and it's FREE.
The equinox time is when the sun crosses the celestial equator. What this means, the sun tracks along the satellite arc - and you can use this to find out what obstacles are blocking the view your satellite dish has. |
Not exactly.
Although the sats are in the same plane as the sun, from our perspective on earth, the sats appear to be below the track of the sun, basically by an amount equal to the sat's declination, which for most of us is in the 5-7 deg range. So what you need to do, is find the day when the sun's declination is equal to the sat's declination. On the day of the autumn equinox, the sun's declination is zero, so you have to wait between a week to 10 days after the equinox for the sun's declination to be in the -5 to -7 deg range. So the critical time is 7-10 days after the autumn equinox and 7-10 days prior to the spring equinox..... approximately (I'm just doing this from memory, so I may be off a bit). You can use the same USNO web page that we use to determine true south to tell you the declination of the sun, and when the declination equals your declination, then you can use the sun for alignment. I also have a program that shows the sun's declination, as well as your southerly and extreme declinations... ie you have a different declination for sats to your east or west than you do for sats to your south, so the solar outage period is different for different sats.
Linear Mode
