Typo - L1.2 train corrected to L1.3. ... At the end of April SpaceX stated: Making the satellites generally invisible to the naked eye within a week of launch. We're doing this by changing the way the satellites fly to their operational altitude, so that they fly with the satellite knife-edge to the Sun. We are working on implementing this as soon as possible for all satellites since it is a software change https://www.spacex.com/news/2020/04/28/starlink-update That change has been implemented, at least for two trains at 380km. Last night (14th May 21:40UT) the L1.3 train was dark passing south of UK. The previous roll-angle mode would have presented the full face of the sunlit panel to me, but nothing was seen of the complete train (naked-eye). This morning (15th May 01:30UT) the L1.4 train was observed, again to the south, this time with binoculars. The full face of the sunlit panel should have been visible, but all objects apart from one were magnitude ~4.5. So apart from the first week of each mission (as stated in the quote) the days of bright Starlink trains are over, as SpaceX promised. If the panel was edge on to the Sun, I was seeing the panels at glancing angles of 26 and 13 degrees in the two cases, respectively, but the panel surface is dark and sunlight reflection is from the edge of the panel. The one exception on the L1.4 train was SL-1235 which was the first magnitude object that would have been expected with the previous roll-control mode. I did not seek to observe Starlinks that are under power on the way up to 550km to see if they were using the same knife-edge mode. regards Richard Cole _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Fri May 15 2020 - 07:55:32 UTC
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