Daijiworld Media Network – Bengaluru (EP)

Bengaluru, Sep 28: You are most likely to lose your cable or satellite TV transmission for around 10 to 15 mins a day, in the next 10 days.

This strange phenomenon is called as a solar outage, also called a sun transit or sun fade, which is an interruption or distortion of geostationary satellite signals caused by interference (background noise) of the sun, when the sun aligns directly with a satellite and the earth station it is receiving or transmitting data to.

It usually occurs briefly twice per year after the March equinox and before the September equinox for the Southern Hemisphere.

Given that all geostationary satellites are over the same geographic plane, the equator, and orbiting at the same distance, 36 000 km, the solar outage will apply to every antenna at a given location.

Currently this phenomenon is occurring in different parts of the world. It started in the third week of September and is likely to continue up to October second week. Cable TV operators have warned that it may interfere with TV signals.

As sun outages cause complete disconnection or decreased quality in signals, they disrupt TV watching, online trading, online financial transactions, ATM and other services.