I observed STARSHINE II from the cruise ship ROYAL PRINCESS as follows: December 23, 2001 at 0458UT from 44.4 degress South, 63.2 degrees West between Puerto Madryn, Argentina and Port Stanley, Falkland Islands. Six flashes were seen. Flash 1 and 2 (magnitudes +2 and +2) were 12 seconds apart, then 45 seconds elapsed before flashes 3 and 4(magnitudes +2 and +3). These were separated by 19 seconds; then 45 seconds elapsed and flashes 5 and 6 (magnitude +4) were seen separated by 26 seconds. Four of these flashes were recorded on video. Now what is interesting here is in relation to the recent email: "All of these data indicate the spin period to be 121 seconds ± 1 second." received from radio monitoring by other STARSHINE people. The timeline of the above observation is: 00 - flash 1 12 - flash 2 57 - a 45 second gap, then flash 3 occurs here 76 - 19 seconds from flash 3 to 4 121- end of 45 second gap, then flash 5 occurs here 147- flash 6 occurs here While the timeline has been selectively anchored at the first flash it does show 121 seconds from flash 1 to flash 5, which may be related to the radio spin interval. December 25, 2001 (Christmas Day) from 53 deg 07minutes South, 60 degrees 05 minutes West at 0431UT. A +1 magnitude flash seen followed 38 seconds later by a +2 magnitude flash followed 4 seconds later by another + 2 magnitude flash. We rounded Cape Horn on ths day. The STARSHINE observations reported yesterday from December 30, 2001 were then made from the Pacific Ocean. In addition, I have seen Molniya satellites from the northern hemisphere at fairly distant ranges. I attempted observation of Molniya 3-24 (15738) on December 23, 2001 at 0549UT and was disappointed to see that it was just barely visible in 7x35 binoculars varying irregularly between 6.5 and 8 magnitude. Paul Paul D. Maley Tel. 281.244.0208, Fax. 281.244.1140 Lat. 29.6049N, Lon. 95.1069W, Alt. 6m ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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