The Brightness of VisorSat-Design Starlink Satellites

Abstract

The mean of 430 visual magnitudes of VisorSats adjusted to a distance of 550-km (the operational altitude) is 5.92 +/-0.04. This is the characteristic brightness of these satellites when observed at zenith. VisorSats average 1.29 magnitudes fainter than the original-design Starlink satellites and, thus, they are 31% as bright.

References in corpus (3)

• 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 (3)

• Analytical simulations of the effect of satellite constellations on optical and near-infrared observations
• A Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function for VisorSat Calibrated with 10,628 Magnitudes from the MMT-9 Database
• Starlink Satellite Brightness -- Characterized From 100,000 Visible Light Magnitudes