I can see what appears
to be something on my east most shots, does anyone know how to ask NASA if they
want these?
-----Original Message-----
From: utah-astronomy-admin@mailman.xmission.com
[mailto:utah-astronomy-admin@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Jim Gibson
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003
2:31 PM
To:
utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy]
Shuttle - our expierence
I would like Patrick to respond first but he must be tied up right now.
My expierence was as follows.
I met Patrick and others at exit 23 outside of St. George about 6:00 AM
along with my wife and 4 year old grandson. We went to a good observation point
and Patrick and I set up our cameras. There were about 10 others inour group
there. Patrick set his up with a
telephoto (film) and he suggested that I set mine up wide angle (digital). Patrick kept us informed when to watch
for the shuttle. The Shuttle
approached where and when he said it would to the West or North West about 7:56
(+ or – a minute). My camera was set at f2.8 open for 8 seconds. I took
my first shot. The thing was beautiful, straight as an arrow, obviously high,
and moving fast, and way faster than any jet airline I had ever seen. The Shuttle glowed with an indescribable
orange glow.
By the time the first shot ended I could tell the Shuttle was on top of
me so I shot straight up. I touched off the camera the looked up just in time
to see a noticeable increase in glow, not only in brightness but also in width
of the contrail. Later, Patrick referred to the event as a flare. The shot
ended and I had to turn the camera 180 degrees, pointed towards the eastern
horizon and shot off another picture.
The whole time my wife was using my Galileo binoculars 15X70s. Sheila,
my wife, saw the bottom of the space shuttle with 15x Binos at approximately
300,000 feet and could see swirls of flames or balls of heat coming from off
the tiles. She would compare it to when someone sucks on a cigarette the end
glows and there are sparklies and it keeps getting brighter as they suck. While she was watching, she said,
“I see flames.” We
understand that this was our first experience observing the re-entry; we are
inexperienced and were unalarmed at the site. Sheila wants to be cautious
because they weren’t like licking flames, just a growing brighter glow
like a cigarette. We don’t know if what we saw was normal. She could not
see the individual tiles but she could see a lot of dynamic activity or
movement on the bottom (don’t blow this out of proportion, maybe normal). She noticed this at about the 10
o’clock position to the 12 o’clock position relative to our
location. She didn’t see anything fall or any debris. She did NOT notice
the flair per se that I photographed.
Jim Gibson
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