Sts-131

[redwudz]

I vastly underestimated the brightness of a night time shuttle launch. No usable video. Imagine the brightness of the sun coming up, orange colored, lighting up our viewing area from six miles away like daylight.

But I did get this nice still shot of the exhaust plume a bit later just before sunrise.



The shape is caused by the winds. It's colors are partially caused by the dilute hydrochloric acid from the solid rocket boosters. You don't want to be there when it reaches the ground.


About what the launch looked like reflected against the launch tower. Very bright and very hot. A NASA picture photoshoped to look similar to what I saw, but I couldn't get the orange color right.




Another NASA shot, side view, no alterations.



The Kennedy Space Center was locked down just after we arrived, about twelve midnight, Sunday. The launch was scheduled for 6:21 AM Monday. After the launch, it took us four hours to go the 38 miles back to the hotel because of the massive traffic jam caused by the launch. 10 MPH on a 70 MPH freeway. The local commuters were not amused. I was up for about 26 hours total. Slept in a bit the next day.

But it was fun and I'd do it over. Only three more launches before the program ends. All are day launches, I believe.

One NASA video of the launch: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/on_demand_video.html?param=http://mfile3.akamai....1_launch-t.gif

About four minutes of audio from my camera. 25 seconds before the launch till about 3.5 minutes after. It takes about 55 seconds for the sound to reach from 6 miles away. Overloaded the mic quite a bit. Very loud.

[budz]

Awesome pictures!