Sun outages will begin this year from Oct. 3 to Oct 12, an Emery Telcom representative reported. For about a week each spring and each fall, there are solar interferences with satellites that can cause interruptions in television service, which is called a sun outage.
Further explained, a sun outage is an interruption or distortion of satellite signals. This is caused by interference from solar radiation. As the sun’s path across the sky changes from day to day, there are times of the year in which the sun is in a direct line behind a communication satellite that sends programming signals to a receiving dish on Earth.
Most channels see the effects of this outage, which can occur during various times of the day and will last up to 15 minutes. During this phenomena, short service interruptions may be experienced.
The interruptions can include sparkles in the first days of the aforementioned sun outage timeframe. As this takes place, the reception may gradually deteriorate to the point of a total outage. There may also be blocks or freeze-frames in the picture before and after peak times.