That June 97 launch was seen as far east as Tucson. Unfortunately, I was not one of the witnesses but lots of UFO fanatics *did* see it. From some pictures on the news I would guess that it got at least 15 deg above the horizon. Most orbital launches barely get above the horizon. A Delta launch (5 Iridiums) in December may have reached 5 deg. I did see that one and it was incredible. The plume may have been 2 deg wide just behind the rocket and very brightly backlit in an otherwise dark sky (45+ minutes after sunset I believe) and remained visible for at least 15 minutes. It also caused lots of calls to tv and police. I was never able to see a nightime launch from just the light emitted by the hot exhaust. Richard Clark rclarke@mcst.gsfc.nasa.gov On Fri, 18 Sep 1998 JRBURCA@aol.com wrote: > > I was just writing a reply to someone asking how high it had gotten > from my vantage point and I had added some comments about that > very thing so here it is: > > It reached about as high above the western horizon as two hand widths > (little finger to thumb). I'm guessing that would be something like 12-14 > degrees in elevation when it disappeared from my view. > > I saw another one I think June 1997 from atop a mountain north of Castaic > but still at least 110 miles away. It was a Minuteman II (rather than last > night's Minuteman III). It was an evening twilight launch and was truely > spectacular. It seemed to have a steeper apparently almost straight up > trajectory and seemed very fast and I remember that it seemed to get > much higher above the horizon, maybe even 30 degrees, before veering > out over the Pacific (from my perspective). It pleasantly surprised me > in its impressiveness. > > As a matter of fact Brian Webb has a picture of that launch on his page: > > http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rawhide_home_page/ > > Although I just tried loading it up and for some reason the picture did > not load. Hope he isn't changing it to another one. > > -- Jake Rees > Burbank, California > >