Sunday, Februry 16, 2003, 10:43 PM EST Telescope caught single image By Kelly Young, FLORIDA TODAY HOUSTON -- The picture taken of shuttle Columbia as it flew over New Mexico upon re-entry was actually captured with a small telescope favored by amateur astronomers, a digital camera and a pair of flat mirrors used by the U.S. Air Force. In the early morning of Feb. 1 as Columbia pointed itself toward the Kennedy Space Center landing strip, Air Force researchers intended to test data that NASA had given them a few hours before that required pointing their Questar telescope, with a 3.5-inch aperture, along a track that NASA had predicted. This was the first time the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base outside of Albuquerque, N.M. had tried this. Their predictions were slightly off. They only got one picture because they had to keep readjusting the mirrors. Clouds blocked the view over the horizon. When the shuttle emerged from the clouds, Robert Q. Fugate, senior scientist and technical director of Starfire Optical Range at the research lab's Directed Energy Directorate, and his team had to do some quick adjustments. "Because we didn't have exact data from NASA, we were continually having to correct the pointing of the coelostat," Fugate said. "It was hard to follow. It goes by, as you know, very quickly." Along with the telescope, they used an astronomical tool called a coelostat, which is basically two flat mirrors. It's frequently used to direct laser beams at objects in space. "Imagine that you're outside and you have a mirror, a flat mirror in front of you," Fugate said. "If you tilt that mirror up, you can see the sky by tilting it horizontal." If you put another mirror on top of that mirror, you can see anywhere in the sky by tilting the two. So astronomers point the telescope into the first mirror, and a computer moves the 4.9-foot mirrors to see around the sky. The now famous photograph of the shuttle, released by NASA Feb. 7, was taken with a sophisticated digital camera when Columbia was 70 miles away and 36 degrees above the horizon, roughly one-third of the way upward in the sky. [NOTE: The photo is available at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/investigation/sensors/107_bw_2_07.jpg ] To the naked eye, it just appeared like a bright star. It passed overhead in just 24 seconds, and some fraction of that time was spent waiting for the camera's computer chip to register the image it had just taken. "This is basically something we don't normally do," Fugate said. "It's not something we've done in the past." The one photo they caught of the shuttle looked small -- taking up roughly 1/17 of the overall field of view of the camera. That's why it may be hard to see what's really happening to the vehicle over Albuquerque. Another reason is that the shuttle was so hot and bright that it oversaturated the pixels in the image. "We can't see the difference between light and dark on the orbiter," Fugate said, so the shuttle appears all the same color. According to tracking information provided by NASA, as Columbia passed north of Albuquerque, pressure in the landing gear tires was increasing, temperatures sensors in the left wing were failing and the wing flaps were trying to compensate for increased drag. When Fugate saw the image, he didn't think anything special at first. There appears to be a slightly bumpy area on the leading edge of the left wing, an area that also may have been damaged during launch when a 2.67-pound piece of insulation from the orange external fuel tank fell and hit Columbia. There is also a grayish wispyness behind the orbiter. Minutes later, NASA lost contact with Columbia and the ship broke up over Texas. "It's not clear to me that there's something there yet," shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said Feb. 7. "If your eye is sharp, maybe you can draw a conclusion. I can't ... All by itself, I don't think it's very revealing." Analysts are examining the photo and comparing it to other images taken of successful shuttle approaches to see if there are any differences and see if the bumpy area is just a result of the angle the image was taken. A NASA investigative team determined last week that the hot plasma could have snuck inside the orbiter through a hole in the ship's aluminum skin. This would account for the temperature rises seen inside and around the left wing area. Fugate and his team turned the image over to NASA investigators the afternoon of Feb. 1. So far, it's the only known image of the vehicle over New Mexico. NASA is seeking more video and still images from the western United States. About 85 searchers spent the weekend scouring two square miles of Embudito Canyon outside Albuquerque for shuttle wreckage. Witnesses reported hearing sonic booms over the area on landing day. Copyright © 2003 FLORIDA TODAY.