🚀 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

In article <47jcbt$5fr@news.cc.utah.edu>, pwiggins@fcom.cc.utah.edu 
says...
Add me to the list of Columbia re-entry observers!

I am in Colorado Springs, and Columbia passed just to the south of
here at about 4:30am MST. Columbia's overflight was clearly visible,
there was not a cloud in the sky. The plasma trail stretched across
the entire sky, rising just south of Pike's Peak and passing just below
Orion before disappearing on the southeast horizon. The trail was
visible for many minutes after Columbia had passed, but I didn't time
how long as I wanted to watch the landing on NASA-TV and so went back
inside.

I had seen a re-entry once before from Colorado Springs (STS-62 in 1994)
but that had been within a half-hour of sunrise and I could not see the
plasma trail. This time, Columbia flew past about two hours before
sunrise, and the trail was brilliant. I'm not enough of an astronomy
buff to guage how bright the trail was, but Columbia herself easily
outshown Rigel and Betelgeuse in Orion. It was an absolutely spectacular 
sight!

-Brian

I saw it in a parking lot in the San Jose area.  I really wasn't
expecting to see it because of the nearly-full moon and the light
covering of clouds.  But it did showed up at about 3:23am, it appeared
to be traveling from the northwest to the northeast. I think it lasted
about 30 seconds.

It was definately more spectacular then I expected!  I thought it was going
to be a faint orange dot moving across the sky, and that would about be it.
Was I wrong!  It was a LARGE orange dot with a com trail, quickly racing
across the sky.  I certainly did not expect the trail, nor was I
expecting too see it appearing so bright and low.

And I did hear the sonic boom, about 8 minutes after the pass.  It was a
very low rumble, you wouldn't even notice it if you weren't listening for
it.  It certaining did not wake up any dogs in the neighborhood!

It was fantasic, definately worth losing some sleep over!!

Ben