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A few weeks ago one of the members of our astronomy club posted a picture that he had taken of several Geosynchronous Satellites that he had recently had taken. After firing off a quick e-mail to my Satellite Samuri Leo Taylor, I managed to get enough information to take a shot at it myself. Last night (March 15th) after photographing the ISS cross overhead, I was primed to chase a few satellites myself. Well, chasing is the wrong terminology when trying to capture an image of them. Basically all you need is a camera, a lens at least 180 mm long, and a tripod.  Use the highest asa/iso that you can. Point it to an area that there is Geosynchronous Satellites and expose for about 1.5 to 2 minutes. This is what you can get.

The region I choose to shoot was just below M42 (The Orion Nebula). That is the large reddish object at the top of the photograph. Below it are 3 satellites going across the image. They are just points of light not moving, while the stars leave trails as they move across the sky. Sat-Mex 5, ANIK F3, and ECHOSTAR 7. Locations for these satellites are eaily found on the internet, or I used a astronomy program called The Sky 6, which actually plotted them on a star chart for me. Now, how simple is that to add to your astrophoto collection!

There are approximately 300 operational geosynchronous satellites.

Geostationary satellites appear to be fixed over one spot above the equator. Receiving and transmitting antennas on the  earth do not need to track such a satellite. These antennas can be fixed in place and are much less expensive than tracking antennas. These satellites have revolutionized global communications, television broadcasting and weather forecasting, and have a number of important defense and intelligence applications. (Wikipedia)

I also found a bonus when I looked at this frame.  I captured a meteoroid in it just below M42.

Tags: astrophotography, Geosynchronous Satellites, long exposure, M42, Orion Nebula, Satellites, star trails