Geostationary Satellites

Representation of the motion of Geosynchronous artificial satellites orbiting the Earth.

Geosynchronous satellites follow a circular orbit around the Earth at a distance of approximately 35,786km above the surface. A large amount of these satellites are fully Geostationary, lining up very closely with the Earth's equator. Others diverge from this single perimeter line and wave around the equatorial plane with a period equal to a sidereal day (~23h56m4s).

Each satellite is projected at the location on Earth where it's directly at the zenith. Time is accelerated to 5min/frame to highlight the daily motion.

Data provided by Space Track in TLE format, propagated to space-time coordinates using satellite-js.

Solar terminator overlay borrowed from mbostock's.

See also Earth Satellites and Satellites Voronoi.