Date: 10 Dec 2006 03:44:55
From: Glenn Holliday
Subject: Observation of the shuttle in flight
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The night was beautiful and clear, so I decided to try it.
When NASA TV said things looked good with 20 minutes to go,
I went out to the bank of the Potomac River in Virginia,
about 60 miles inland from the ocean. There's a point in a
river bend where I have an unobstructed view to the east across
2 miles of water. The shuttle was scheduled to launch from
Kennedy at 8:47 EST. I expected it to pass by here about five
minutes later. At 8:51 I got out of the car and started counting
seconds with my eyes on the sky.
At about 8:53 I saw an orange spot, higher in the sky than
I expected. In binoculars it was a bright orange comet with
a short tail, oriented with the nose pointing about 50 degrees
left of vertical. It was not as bright as Sirius, but
as bright as any other star I could see to compare it to.
I first saw it close to due south of me, south of Lepus.
It passed right to left, passing above Sirius and
below Saiph. Its altitude was about a fistwidth above
the river, which is about 10 degrees. The Sky says
Sirius was about 10 degrees then.
After about a minute, I saw the orange tail shrink to nothing in
the course of a few seconds. A distinct orange glow remained
in binoculars. I then saw the orange tail reappear and disappear
again three times, in spurts of a couple of seconds each. Sadly, it
then passed behind a clump of trees to my left. Its azimuth was a
little north of east then. I walked around to the other side of the
trees, but could not find it again.
I'm very excited that I found this sighting. (And I posted a copy
of this to my club's mailing list before posting to saa.)
--
Glenn Holliday holliday@acm.org
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