I have received the following report from Paul Maley. He requested that I post it to the list. Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 One of the toughest observations yet. I am currently aboard the cruise ship CROWN PRINCESS sailing from Port Canaveral to New York. I observed naked eye part of the in flight sequence of the STEREO Delta rocket flight. I was nearly ready to give up after reaching the end of the 15 minute launch window (or so I thought). I first caught sight of two objects coming from behind the main stack of the ship as we steamed northeast. My position was closer than 136 nmi. from Port Canaveral which I logged at 0211UT on 26 Oct. At that time the ship was at 30 deg 00.57m N, 78 deg 54.57m W. I first saw two objects moving right to left (SSW to SE) at 0154UT. The trailing fainter one made 3 tumbles and I never saw it again. The brighter was about 2.5 magnitude and briefly went into a small cloud; then I could see a contrail emanating from it. It eventually after a minute and a half reached -4 magnitude with an orange trail 9 degrees long. I was looking at the aft end of the rocket which was quite unexpected since I had not read the trajectory sequence information. It burned out at 015430 followed by a small flash 11 seconds later. Again, observation was made with the unaided eye from Deck 8 of the ship. All the while I was being hit by a 35 knot wind. Paul Maley ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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