Sun's up, so the Sky has gone dark

Photo / Supplied

First there was rain fade and atmospheric conditions, now the sun is causing problems for Sky TV viewers.

A fuzzy screen or "no signal" message has started to appear on screens, and viewers are being warned that the problem, lasting up to 10 minutes, is likely to continue daily between 1.15pm and 2.35pm until April 17.

Sky TV is blaming the outages on signal breaks caused by the sun overwhelming satellites in the early afternoon.

The "sun outages" occur around the summer and winter equinoxes, when the sun is directly behind the line of sight between Sky's satellite and its Earth station and dishes.

Chief executive John Fellet said radio-frequency noise from the sun was stronger than the signal from the satellite, resulting in a brief service interruption.

"The energy from the sun is so huge that if you've got a dish, it dwarfs whatever signal we're getting. It's like looking into the sun when someone is walking towards you - it is so bright that you can't make out the figure."

The fault occurs only on pay TV.

Free-to-air networks also use satellites, but their programmes are fed to viewers' television sets through UHF or VHF antennas, which are not affected by solar interference.

The Sky problem is not easily solved - it would require switching the signal to another satellite and moving every subscriber's satellite dish two degrees.

Once the equinox reaches its peak, the interference will gradually decrease.

It is a common phenomenon around the world, and interferes with other satellite-dependent industries, such as some countries' stock exchanges.

Solar flares - explosions in the sun's atmosphere - are also believed to interfere with television signals, as the energy and heat they create overpower satellite communication.