Empirical Earth · Space, Satellites & the Edges of the Map

The Clarke belt — a million dishes all aimed at the same ring

The claim

“Geostationary satellites can’t exist; 'satellite' dishes really pick up ground transmitters.”

What is measured

Thousands of TV dishes point at a fixed spot 35,786 km up, where one orbit takes one sidereal day, only possible above a rotating sphere.

What would show this is wrong

a working Clarke-belt satellite television installation above 82° latitude, receiving from a genuinely geostationary satellite with a fixed dish. The equipment is commercially available and the latitude is reachable by scheduled flight. Nobody has ever done it, because the Earth is in the way.

Sources

  1. Geostationary orbit (the Clarke belt). At 35,786 km above the equator an orbit takes one sidereal day (23h56m), so a satellite appears fixed; fixed dishes worldwide aim at this single equato link
  2. The geostationary ring: slots and limits. The ITU parcels the equatorial belt into ~2° longitude slots (~180 in all); geostationary satellites orbit at 35,786 km and fall below the horizon — link
  3. The South Pole cannot see a geostationary satellite. The CTBTO’s auxiliary seismic station AS114 sits at exactly 90° south. The organization states plainly that because of the station’s loca link
  4. Geostationary elevation angle and the high-latitude cutoff. For a receiver on the satellite’s meridian, the elevation angle of a geostationary satellite is arctan[(cos φ − Rₑ/r) ÷ sin φ], wi link
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