Rick Baldridge wrote: > I have seen, photographed and video taped four Shuttle re-entries over > California, starting with STS-63. ... > Believe me, NONE of them show even the slightest indication of brightenings > in the trail or small pieces coming off. Your experience, supported by recorded imagery, cannot be ignored. > When I looked at my video, there were very fain but definite pieces > coming off, with the first piece seen on the video at 5:53:45am PST +/- 1 > second. A had made a time-hack as I always do to obtain timings, and > this hack was synchronized to WWV. As far as I know at this time, I > was the furthest west observer on the re-entry track to get a video. Few, if any folks bother to record an accurate time reference, so I'm sure that NASA will appreciate having this detail. > NASA has been given a copy of the tape. They may want the master of > course to analyze further. Perhaps shuttle program manager Ronald Dittemore referred to your imagery in this comment at this afternoon's press conference: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030202investigation/ "In addition, Dittemore said images taken by an observer in California that appears to show an early trail of debris behind the shuttle will be examined and compared with the actual telemetry. I believe I also heard him state that they had interviewed the professional astronomer in California who made an eyewitness report of objects trailing Columbia. > I also took two still photos, one through a 16mm lens that shows the > entire visible trace of the Shuttle and BOTH photos show definite > brightenings in the trail that corresponde to brightenings the video shows. > Again, I have NEVER seen this activity before STS-107. The photos will > be scanned today and posted, after I get a copy to NASA. To provide the strongest possible basis for comparison of STS 107 versus normal re-entries, I believe that everyone who has clear, reasonably well documented images or video of a past shuttle re-entry should notify NASA of their availability. By reasonably well-documented, I mean the STS flight number and the co-ordinates of the location from which the imagery was taken. Given the high speed of a re-entry, that information will narrow the time of the event considerably. If an accurate time record is also available, so much the better. Ted Molczan ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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