What is Sun Outage?

A sun outage, sun transit or sun fade is an interruption or distortion of geostationary satellite signals caused by interference from solar radiation. The effect is due to the sun's radiation overwhelming the satellite signal.

At the time of outage, the apparent path of the sun across the sky takes it directly behind the line of sight between an earth station and a satellite. The sun radiates strongly across the entire spectrum, including the microwave frequencies used to communicate with satellites on C-band, Ku band, and Ka band the sun swamps the signal from the satellite.

We broadcast via Intelsat 18 on C-Band and will be affected with the effects of Sun Outage.

When usually does Sun Outage takes place?

Sun outages usually occur during the months of February & March and September & October and can last as long as 15 minutes a day and take place over a period of 15 days. The effects of a sun outage vary in degree from minimal to total outage throughout the 15 day period. Once it reaches its peak, the interference will gradually decrease becoming less noticeable each day after.

Unfortunately, there is technically nothing we can do to prevent sun outages from occurring. Each satellite service that we receive signals from will experience this interference at predictable times during this time so please do not be alarmed if you experience this loss of signal.

I want to know more on this

Each Spring and Fall, cable companies experience a technical phenomenon called "sun outages." For a period of about 2 weeks, the sun causes "solar interference" to all geostationary satellite signals. As the sun's path across the sky gets lower each day, there are times when it is in a direct line behind a communication satellite that is sending signals to a receiving satellite dish here on earth. When the dish antenna is looking into the sun, the interference from the sun overrides the signals from the satellite. This is when a sun outage occurs.

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Please download a copy of March, 2013 predicted Sun Outages.