Frank, I also appreciate your post, because it is a very eloquent description of what I saw again this morning. I was surprised to see the new train was still bright, even though it was now passing in the North. All of them were visible naked eye, even with some high cirrus. All were about magnitude 2 coming out of shadow, and yes the leader was quite far ahead of the others. I even tried to time each one's passage between two stars, which was nearly impossible of course. I won't include that in my report but if anybody wants a scan of those timings I could send it to them I don't know why you would want it :0) I saw a strange bright flash along their path before even the leader, but I will check to make sure there wasn't anything else there and included in my report for this morning later. I wonder if anyone has any ideas where the other payloads would be located? Out during deep sky tonight will try to catch up on reports tomorrow. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 1:23 PM, Richard Cole via Seesat-l<seesat-l_at_satobs.org> wrote: Frank, That's interesting. There have been several reports of good displays from the L1.8 train across the US this week. SpaceX have kept this train in a standard Sun facing mode for a few days, while on the previous launch at the start of June all the Starlinks were put in a dark mode within 36h of launch. Also, because the spacecraft velocity vector was very close to the Sun azimuth on passes over the US, the Sun facing mode meant the solar panels were facing close to nadir (in your case pointing azimuth 320, elevation -60, so pretty well face on to you) so you saw the full size of the array, hence the brightness. regards Richard Cole On 17/06/2020 17:23, Frank E Reed via Seesat-l wrote: > My first posts to seesat-l date back about twenty years. I haven't posted > in a few years, but this morning's Starlink stream was inspirational. > > Last night's skies over southern New England were clear, and I had some > nice opportunities for a few interesting observations from 1:00 onward. > I was using heavens-above for predictions, and I noticed a good > opportunity to see the latest launch stream pass over at 4:15 EDT > (17 June 0815 UT) if I could stay awake. > > Morning twilight was underway (nautical twilight, Sun altitude near > -9 degrees), and limiting magnitude by then was about 3.0 toward > the south. More or less on-schedule, one satellite appeared where > expected, about halfway between Saturn and Altair heading toward > the eastern horizon. There was only the one satellite for about > thirty seconds, and I started to wonder if the stream had already > dispersed. > > Then dozens and dozens of bright satellites began pouring out > from behind a tree in the southwest! Maximum altitude was near 65 deg > in the southeast. Nearly sixty satellites stretching across roughly > 45 degrees in a somewhat random scatter pattern. All except one were > around magnitude 1.0 for most of the pass. The outlier, either one > of the SpaceX experiments or maybe just debris in the stream, > was around magnitude 3.0. Really spectacular. I have seen Starlink > streams within a few days after launch before, but this was by far > the most impressive. > > The stream showed some evidence of three-dimensional structure. > The satellites were scattered rather randomly with a few close pairs, > and as they travelled across the sky, the relative angles in a couple of > the close pairs increased. I didn't make any measurements or get any > photos, but I would guess the angular separations changed from roughly > 5 minutes of arc to 7 minutes of arc (that order of magnitude) as the > satellites moved across 30 degrees of sky. I'm not sure I believe this > was due to three-dim structure in the stream, but that was my > strong impression. > > Frank Reed > Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com > Conanicut Island USA > > Facebook Visual Satellites Obs group (minor activity): > https://www.facebook.com/groups/2049822665272876/ > _______________________________________________ > Seesat-l mailing list > http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l > -- mob: 0771 858 8940 _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Wed Jun 17 2020 - 22:27:59 UTC
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