Sun TV and Vaasthu

Whereever you may live in the world, if you want to receive TV signals from a communications satellite, you have to point your dish towards the equator. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you have to point your dish to a direction in the south. Why is this ?

This is because all the communication satellites have to be 'geostationary' so that you do NOT have to keep adjusting your dish to point to the satellite. All the geostationary satellites will be located 36,000 km above the equator called as the 'Clarke belt'. At this height, the centrifugal force and the gravitational force cancel out each other and helps to keep the satellite stationary relative to earth.

So if you want to keep your dish in your backyard, per 'modern vaasthu' you better buy a North facing house/apartment (in North Hemisphere).

Now, let us get specific to SUN TV reception in North America. Dish Network, which is owned by Echostar communications, provides Sun TV channel.

Sun TV is available from 2 satellites, Echostar-1 and Echostar-3. The position of a satellite in this belt can be uniquely defined just by the longitude alone. This is because the other 2 coordinates are fixed for the 'Clarke belt', the height has to be 36000 km and the latitude has to be equator !

The longitude for Echostar-3 is 61.5 degrees and Echostar-1 is 148 degrees. The Echostar-3 serves the Eastern US and the Echostar-1 serves the Western-US.

You may wonder all this is fine, but what about the co-ordinates for my dish ! The elevation and azimuth for your dish can be easily calculated at this site http://www.sat-sales.com/calculator.php.

There is one more site http://www.n2yo.com/ which provides real time tracking of most of the satellites. I was amazed to see the information in this site !