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Is that a bird? A plane? no its the space shuttle Atlantis!


Just cause I thought this was cool its just the vapor trail

You can see the dual rocket fire in this one

As always remember you can click on the picture and it will come up a bit larger on your screen....

Ok so maybe I am a little overly pleased with myself over these pictures, after all its just a fire ball with some smoke trailing, but trust me this is the space shuttle Atlantis as she launched on Monday, Nov 16, 2009 from Cape Canaveral.

I am on the gulf side (western) coast of Florida, Cape Canaveral is on the Atlantic (Eastern coast) of Florida, so I wasn't sure if I would be able to see much of it when it launched, especially since it was day time - a night launch, yeah maybe, but a full daylight launch ey, maybe not so much, but like the true photogeek that I am I had my camera at the ready just in case.

I set it up about 15 minutes prior to launch in the back yard - zoom lens pointed in the part of the sky I guessed might be where it would show up - if it was going to show up at all, manual focus to optimize everything and then I came in and sat down to watch the NASA channel.

The launch was set for 2.28pm EST and like any well run and oiled machine it went off like clockwork. So I was watching in the house ready to run the few short steps out the door to my camera in case I could see something. I watched and watched on TV, kept glancing out the back nothing yet. They were giving stats, "the space shuttle Atlantis is now XXX bazillion feet in the air, traveling at a gozillion miles an hour.." and so on. I was just about ready to pack it up and lick my wounds for not being able to get any shots and then there she was arching through the sky just a few degrees more northerly then I had guessed!!

Quite a sight for a small town girl from Arizona. I remember as a kid Vandenberg air base in California used to do various rocket launches and at night the vapor trail was visible to us, but this was amazing, to know there were actual people on board and to top it all off the space shuttle program will be scraped in the near future so if you dont see it in the next six tries, you never will.

So that was my excitement for the day well could be for the week or maybe the month even! The stats for these shots, I am fairly sure that the shuttle was traveling at around 4000mph (according to what I was hearing in the house on the TV), I didnt catch how high she was though.

Of course part of this little adventure only supports my theory that I need a stronger zoom lens for my camera - which is a little depressing lol.
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