On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Robert Reeves wrote: > Did anyone happen to catch the STS-94 pass over Texas at 5:23 AM CDT > Wednesday, April 16? I intended to, but didn't set my alarm the previous night (and subsequently woke up at ~5:30: a tad late). > Spectacular! The God's favored us here in San Anmtonio. Three straight > clear mornings with STS passes and a reentry. This is very unseasonal > weather (usually clouds up at 1 AM.) but I am not complaining. STS popped > up over the trees right on time and damn! It was cooking! So that's what > Mach 25 looks like. One thing or another over the past years has prevented > me from seeing a reentry, but eveything fell into place this morning. > +> A bright orange fireball followed by that really bright luminescent trail > that lasted two minutes under my bright urban sky. As the trail spread to > an appearance like a fat jet contrail, you could see puffs and knots in it > through binoculars. I can't get over fast it was moving. It startled me so > much I was delayed in getting off two pictures, but they should turn out OK. This I did see. The fireball looked yellow to me though, with a white, yellowish tinged contrail behind it. Judging from where it passed under Polaris, I think the track was a little more southerly (so higher in the sky) than predicted. Couldn't tell that there were that many puffs and knots, but I didn't have any binocs. I never heard any sonic boom. Since I was near loop 410, it's traffic noise may have masked the boom. The color was markedly different than the one I saw in December; that one was definitely orange (the only other one I've seen). It's neat to see something that has humans in it cruise by in such a wonderful fashion. Robert Fenske, Jr. rfenske@swri.edu Sw |The Taming the C*sm*s series: Southwest Research Institute /R---\ | Signal Exploitation & Geolocation Div | I | |"The Martian canals were the San Antonio,Texas USA ph:210-522-3931 \----/ | Martians' last ditch effort."