Geostationary Satellites

When I'm not in my backyard or chasing after my kids, most of my time is spent as an engineer in the satellite communication industry. Every day I work with signal from satellites in geostationary orbits and I've always been curious if I could see them. Geostationary satellites are special because they're at a specific altitude (22,236 miles above the equator) so that they orbit once every 24 hours. This means that from the perspective of someone on the ground the satellites don't appear to move. This is great because you simply point your antenna and you're done. It's also great for me because I point my telescope and I'm done. No pains of keeping the telescope pointed like with the space station.

The problem is that the space station is very bright because it's enormous and only about 250 miles up, these are smaller and MUCH further away.

Using the Fujifilm mirrorless camera I held the camera very steadily up to the eyepiece and took a long exposure photo. I can't see the satellites with my naked eye but they just barely show up in the photo!

Annotated2

AMC-16 is a communications satellite owned by SES. XM-3 and XM-5 are SiriusXM satellites for broadcasting music. I picked these satellites because they're the only grouping of 3 so close together from my New Jersey vantage point.

I later discovered that these satellites are brighter near the equinoxes, so this picture is at almost the worst possible time.