The Brightness of OneWeb Satellites

Abstract

The mean visual magnitude of OneWeb satellites at the standard satellite distance of 1,000 km is 7.18 +/-0.03 . When this value is adjusted to the nominal 1,200 km altitude of a OneWeb satellite in orbit it corresponds to magnitude 7.58 which is an indication of the mean brightness at zenith. The OneWeb satellites are fainter than the original Starlink satellites at a common distance. Preliminary data on the new and dimmer VisorSat design for Starlink suggests that they are still brighter than OneWeb at the satellites' respective operational altitudes.

References in corpus (4)

• Mitigation of LEO Satellite Brightness and Trail Effects on the Rubin Observatory LSST
• First observations and magnitude measurement of Starlink's Darksat
• Concerns about ground based astronomical observations: a step to safeguard the astronomical sky
• Starlink Satellite Brightness Before VisorSat

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Analytical simulations of the effect of satellite constellations on optical and near-infrared observations
• The Steward Observatory LEO Satellite Photometric Survey
• Analysis of the possible satellite contamination in LAMOST-MRS spectra
• Starlink Satellite Brightness -- Characterized From 100,000 Visible Light Magnitudes