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Geostationary Satellites This is a composite picture of the geostationary satellites above the sky of Gnosca, where my observatory lies. The assembly is the result of 192 CCD images taken with a Baker-Schmidt 20 cm f/2 telescope in "still mode" (mounting-motors off). I made the pictures on 26 February 2001. On the image one can see about 80 points of light associable with satellites. Most of them are geostationary satellites, some are rocket bodies or satellites out of service. The identification of these "points of light" is due to Bruno Tilgner (Bruno_Tilgner (at) compuserve.com), who has written special search software for this purpose. The distance of these object is about 38'000 km from Gnosca. The overwhelming majority of the satellites had luminosities of about 12 mag although the limiting magnitude of the images was about 15mag. The field of view of the full stripe is about 90 x 1.3 degrees. Far East is up left. Far West is down right.

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