Seattle, WA   February 15, 2000Number 8



green flash
Green Flash!

Seattle, Mar 3, 2000 — As promised in class! Here is a wonderful and most thorough link on green flash phenomena. Everything you ever wanted to know and more, including excellent data on mirages in general. From Dr. Andrew Young at San Diego State University, Astronomy Dept., an expert on the subject. We have added this Green Flash page to our marine weather section.

  

Sextant Practice Classes

Seattle, Mar 3, 2000 — We will soon be doing regularly-scheduled sextant practice sessions, open to the public. We will try for evening and afternoon sights, then return to the school of reduce them and discuss the work. A good way to brush up. The classes will be free to students who missed the practice with their class, but there will be modest fee for repeats or newcomers. Call for details (206-783-1414) or e-mail Starpath.

  

Training Pak 2000

Seattle, Feb 1, 2000 — We are pleased to announce a new packaging of the Starpath software now available to the public. Now you can purchase all of our software products on one easy-to-use CD. This is an updated version of the 1999 Midshipmen's Edition that we made for the US Naval Academy. Please see Training Pak 2000 for more info.

  

It's Italy vs. New Zealand for the America's Cup

Auckland, NZ, Feb 06, 2000 — For the first time in its 149-year history, the US will not take part in the America's Cup Yacht Race. The Italian team did an excellent job in the challenger series and defeated all comers, including four US teams. The series is described at Louis Vitton Cup. It was one of the best yacht race series we have ever seen. The finals begin on Feb 19. They are covered at www.americascup.org. Both of these links have done a wonderful job to date in covering these races. We can also recommend the Virtual Spectator program as a way to watch the action live via the internet. The races will be covered live on ESPN2, starting Feb 18 at 7PM EST (4PM PST), which = 1 PM, Feb 19 in Auckland.

  

StarPilot ver 1.54

Seattle, Feb 3, 2000 — Our revolutionary new celestial navigation calculator called the StarPilot is well underway in the maritime community. Recent upgrades include zoom features on the graphic plot displays and optional numeric list of the graphic sight planner display. We have also optimized the lunar distance computations. We always wanted to see a Tamaya NC-2000 celestial calculator (price $900, compared to $249 for StarPilot) so we could compare it with the StarPilot. Well now we have one. A professional mariner just traded us a brand new one for a StarPilot. It was the last model we had to test, and now we can definitively state that there is no calculator on the market, regardless of price, that matches the StarPilot in functionality, accuracy, or ease or use. Detailed description and User's Guide are in the catalog as well as free upgrades to latest version.

  

New Cross-References for Chart Problems

Seattle, Feb 1, 2000 — If you purchased our home study course before Jan 15, 2000 you did not receive a copy of our new Cross References. This extensive document, takes every one of the many problems in our home study course and gives detailed cross references to page numbers in our course materials as well as the appropriate reference page in the US Sailing text on Coastal Navigation. If you have questions about any problem, this Reference will guide you to the answer.... but you can, of course, still call us if you wish to. You can download the Cross Reference document as a pdf file in the Tech Support section.

  

New Celestial Nav links

Seattle, Feb, 2000 — We try to keep our links section up to date and chock-a-block with interesting material... which means we add links whenever we find them. If interested, please check out the resources section. New to celestial is a wonderful German site on positional astronomy and a USNO Navigation Data page that computes the full sky for you, any time, any place.

  

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