🚀 go-pugleaf

Keith Jarett (keith@tcs.com) wrote:
: I had to drive east to get out of the SF Bay area fog.  I parked in 
: Danville, in a residential area behind the rather high Las Trampas hills, 
: which served to block the fog.

: Excellent view and rather dark.  It seemed to be a minute or two overdue, 
: but then an orange fireball appeared near the horizon, moving nearly 
: directly toward me rather than arcing up, it seemed.  It left a white 

Following a 3.5 hour drive from Salt Lake City to Southern Utah, my 
significant other and I arrived at our preplanned observing site just 
south of Beaver Utah about 12 minutes before Columbia was due to fly over.

After rushing to set up the camera and sound recording equipment in a 
manner reminiscent of a Keystone Cops skit (all the while, refusing to 
answer Nature's call for fear of missing something) we stood there 
looking skyward.  The predicted ETA came and went.

Then, just as we were thinking we had a no show on our hands, I noticed 
one of the brightest "meteors" sailing past the nearly full and nearly 
set Moon.  Only this meteor was purple and had a train unlike none I'd 
ever seen before.  And it had seven people on board.

What followed was about three minutes of "Ooohs", "Ahhhhs" and an 
occasional "I can't get the stupid camera pointed high enough!".  :-)

And then, just as quickly as it had arrived, Columbia was gone.  Well, 
Columbia the spacecraft was gone, but not Columbia the memory.  Wild!

A couple of minutes of chucking frozen equipment and bodies into the van 
and we were on our way.  Ah, but not before one last "how-d-do" from 
Columbia:  The THUMP of it's sonic boom.

Funny, but we'd been on the road less than five minutes (and with a 3+  
hour drive ahead of us) when we found ourselves listening to live radio 
coverage of Columbia's landing on the other side of the continent.

All-in-all, a very good night.

And thanks to NASA's Gil Carman for letting us know where and when to go 
to see what we saw.

Patrick Wiggins & Holly Phaneuf