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"If a weather satellite's collecting weather data up in a geostationary orbit, it'll hold onto the data and dump it down later."Īnd regional NBN users - whose internet is provided by satellite - may also experience a brief downtime. Weather satellites also use a geostationary orbit, but Dr Carter said the impact to our weather forecasting is minimal when a sun outage occurs. If you're listening when a sun outage is occurring, you might notice your picture or sound quality degrading or your screen replaced by static.ĭr Carter said in most cases, the effect is brief, and you may not even notice any outage. The period in which the Sun passes behind a geostationary satellite is brief - about 10 minutes at most according to Dr Carter - but the noise is enough to degrade or completely disrupt radio and television broadcasts, as well as satellite internet. The background noise - provided by the Sun - blinds you from seeing the satellite, much like with visible light." What impact does that have? " it's like you have this tiny light bulb, passing in front of a massive projector. And the sun transmits those same frequencies," he said. "Most geostationary satellite communication works in the microwave. The gateway station - often a large antenna - then transmits that signal to a satellite, which relays the signal over an area, allowing you to receive it.īut when the Sun traverses the equator during an equinox, it also passes behind geostationary satellites - which Dr Elias Aboutanios, from the University of New South Wales' school of telecommunications, said disrupts their operation.
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The way a satellite works is that a signal comes from a source (like a television or radio station) to a "gateway station."
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Geostationary satellites provide a wide variety of services - including TV and radio broadcasts, telecommunications, and for regional and remote parts of Australia, the internet (through the NBN). That means from the ground, they appear to be stationary in the sky. These satellites orbit the equator at an altitude of about 36,000 kilometres and take 24 hours to complete an orbit. All satellites can be affected by sun outages, but geostationary satellites are particularly vulnerable.
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"Because there is a tilt in the Earth's rotation axis, we have two times in the year when the equator, around midday, is directly beneath the sun.ĭuring the equinoxes the Sun passes directly over the equator ( Wikimedia Commons/ABC) What is a sun outage?Ī sun outage is when the energy from the Sun disrupts the signal from a satellite. "If there was no tilt to the Earth, it would be the equinox all year round," Dr Brett Carter, a space weather expert at RMIT University, said. In an Australian summer, the southern hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun, and in our winter it's tilted away.īut at two points of the year - the equinoxes in March and September - the Earth's axis is side on, so no part of the planet is tilted towards or away from the Sun. This is what causes the seasons in the temperate parts of the world. As it travels around the Sun, different parts of the planet are tilted more directly at the Sun. It's the point at which the Sun appears to traverse the equator from the Earth's perspective, shining equal light on both hemispheres. If you were standing at the geographic equator and looked up during an equinox, you'd see the Sun pass directly overhead. If you're in a regional area, the internet might be patchy, too. Day and night are 12 hours each around the globe today - except at the poles - as the Earth reaches equinox.īut in the fortnight after the autumnal equinox - and the fortnight before the spring equinox - in the southern hemisphere, you may notice that your radio or TV broadcast briefly drops out.