Shuttle landing

I crawled out of my sleeping bag this morning at the LAAS dark sky site near Mt. Pinos, and as I
was uncapping my new Lunt solar scope, was jolted by 2 thunderous sonic booms in rapid succesion.
I immediately thought "shuttle!" (amazing, in my half asleep state), and grabbed
a pair if binoculars, aimed at the front of a quickly moving contrail,
and spotted the distinctive wing shape of the shuttle.
What a cool wat to start the day!
Linton

It's a great way to start the day!

A few years ago my wife dragged my sorry butt down to Orlando, Florida, to visit Disneyland. We arrived too early to check into our hotel and I didn't want to waste a day pass for Disney on a completely unorganized day so we headed over to Cape Canaveral. Just my luck, Atlantis showed up. It was pretty impressive to see and it is amazing just how much of the ship is scortched by the heat of re-entry. My wife really enjoyed it too.

clear skies,
dan

I saw a night reentry of the Columbia when it came over the DFW area. It left a long ionization trail in the night sky. I videotaped it. I estimated it was over Lubbock when we first saw it, and it was somewhere over Louisiana when we lost site of it.

I was in bed asleep when the Columbia broke apart over Texas. My girlfriend said something awakened her. Her awakening exactly coincided with the Columbia passing overhead. For some reason I wasn't aware it was passing over on that fateful day, or I would have been on my roof taping it, too.