Strictly speaking, you can't have a truly geosynchronous orbit that's elliptical (it must be circular). It must also have an inclination of zero.
Rick -
You are confusing geosynchronous with geostationary. Geosynchronous simply means that the orbit period is equal to one sidereal day, so it's "synchronized" with the earth's rotation. As a result, it will always trace the same pattern on the earth's surface. The orbit shape can be just about anything as long as the period is 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.1 seconds.
A special case of geosynchronous orbits is the geostationary orbit, which as you point out, is circular with zero inclination. As its name indicates, it appears stationary to an earth observer, so the "pattern" on the earth's surface is simply the single sub-satellite point.
Steve W3HF
On Feb 21, 2008, at 2:10 PM, melachri@speakeasy.net wrote:
You are confusing geosynchronous with geostationary. Geosynchronous simply means that the orbit period is equal to one sidereal day, so it's "synchronized" with the earth's rotation. As a result, it will always trace the same pattern on the earth's surface. The orbit shape can be just about anything as long as the period is 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.1 seconds.
A special case of geosynchronous orbits is the geostationary orbit, which as you point out, is circular with zero inclination. As its name indicates, it appears stationary to an earth observer, so the "pattern" on the earth's surface is simply the single sub-satellite point.
My bad. I thought it meant that its longitude never changed. I guess there's no special name for a circular geosynchronous orbit (such that the ground track is a line segment of constant longitude).
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melachri＠speakeasy.net -
Rick Mann