I know that our Satellite TV dish when I was a kid had to point to a specific angle southwards, to match the geostationary position, but I'd not expect that with Starlink, unless you were in the Falklands or Antarctica, or something?
Starlink would probably work even better if they didn't have to deal with this restriction, but Starlink might not have been allowed to exist if they didn't design it to work this way.
Thanks!
Your satellite TV dish is talking to something 36,000km up in geosynchronous orbit, around the equator. That's to the south of you.
Starlink are in 550km orbits moving very fast around the planet in a fairly inclined orbit. As another commenter has said, the apparent effect is the cluster tends to "hang out" in the north. It's complicated, a good visualization should help explain it. I don't have one at my fingertips.
coder543's answer elsewhere here seems to furnish the remainder of my confusion.
The radius at a northern latitude is smaller than at the equator, so the satellites are more tightly clustered.
I think coder543's answer is wrong, or at least has the causality backwards. Those geosync orbits are very, very far away from the LEO orbits of Starlink.
I just don't see how - sans external requirement - pointing up isn't more efficient.
- ed. Ok, sorry, I get it. Aim in any direction and you have access to more satellites, even if further away. Pointing up isn't 180º access. Reception is probably less than 90º, I guess? My bad, I'm dumb.