I measured a couple of Starlink satellites tonight, finally, Starlink 1130 (Darksat) arrived (March 17th 2020, 20:15 local time). I could not see the sat on the screen although I turned up to gain a lot. Has something happened to him? Wrong TLE files (would be very strange) or – is it really dimmer than the others? This would be great news. I´ll try to detect the satellite tomorrow again.
Best regards
Rudolf
Update:
I was able to make a comparative measurement between STARLINK 1130 (darksat, left) and STARLINK 1084 (right) on March 19th 2020 (both at operational height, similar altitude above horizon, ASA Astrograph and ASI1600 MM-Cool, G filter, exposure 1 s, gain 294
The coated darksat seems to be considerably dimmer than its uncoated follower. Measurements will follow.
Update 2:
Here is a measurement of the two satellites at similar altitudes from March 19th 2020.
Plate-solved and compared against known stars, the 1130 trail seems to be considerably dimmer. In my measurement, the difference in magnitude was Mag 1.1528 (-65% !). I will do some more comparisons.
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