🚀 go-pugleaf

       Walter Wheeler <TripleW@pop3.cris.com> wrote:

> On the local news here in Jax Fl they said the
> glow was from the sun  hitting a just-launched
> rockets exhaust.  An it looked weird from here, 
> too.
> 
> 

Thanks to all who responded to my inquiry about the red and silver
glowing clouds Sunday morning. Apparently it was a Delta II launch
of a communications satellite. The weather was just right (perfectly
clear sky and very low humidity) for the yet-unseen sunrise to reflect
off of the plume caused by the launch.

Seemingly a number of emergency service providers in Florida were
trying to make certain that it wasn't a downed aircraft. One of the
state-wide Emergency Management radio channels that we monitor had
some sort of search activity trying to locate the source of the
glow and we could hear them talking about witnesses who were sure
the aircraft had come down. We never got a station identifier and
we had checked with all the counties in our immediate area. We 
were getting a lot of skip on our Med channels (UHF) but this
was VHF hi-band and we hadn't gotten any skip on any of those
channels all night until the glow from the rocket launch.

I have passed along the information to those folks who were inquiring
that morning.

-jackie

Jackie McElroy
Venice Florida USA
j_mcelroy@delphi.com