Geosynchronous Satellites

A few weeks ago, my friend and I were observing various objects in Orion with his 18" motorized Plettstone dob, when we noticed a satellite slowly moving thru the FOV. We followed it for a minute and started to have a hunch it might be a geosynchronous satellite (partly because it was so faint in the 18" dob). So we switched off his tracking and sure enough the satellite sat still in the field and all the other stars bagan to slowly drift by. It was a very cool effect and was the first time I have ever seen this occur. Anyone else see this before?

John

I haven't, but others have:

http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/hattonjasonp/hasohp/GEO.HTML

http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfp/cockpit-phys/gp1sup2b.htm

http://www.algonet.se/~b_gimle/geoflare.htm

http://www2.nict.go.jp/ka/control/telesco/telesco.html

Yes, I've seen a few geosats. It's always interesting to watch what happens when the drive is disengaged.

Dave Mitsky

In the mid 80's we were watching flashing satellites. These would appear each night and flash about every 3-6 seconds and would slowly fade out after about a minute. We put a scope on one one night and discovered that they were geosynchronous. We could watch the pulses for another few minutes in the scope and then it finally settled down to a steady light. Evidently some sort of solar reflection that was very narrow, as it would occur about 4 minutes earlier each night. I have never stumbled on one by accident like you did.
Brian