Saturday, November 4, 2006

Launch sight

Here's a photo set of the rocket launch this morning. Wasn't the best we've ever seen, but it was a lot of fun anyway.

The shot above is of the expanding gasses behind the tail of the rocket's second stage, deploying somewhere west of Mexico. The other white dot is the star Sirius.

Kind of a mini Idea Manifesto

In Linux Journal: Ten ideas about Ideas.

Excuse it while it touches the sky

There's a Delta IV rocket launch scheduled for this morning from Vandenberg between 5:52 and 6:05am. We'll be watching. SpaceflightNow has close-to-real-time coverage. The project is called DMSP-17, and the payload is DMSP F17.

The payload is a weather satellite, so I'm sure the trajectory will be polar: toward the South.

Visit this page for visibility footprints. If tis one goes the way I expect it to, at least some of the launch should be visible from much of the Southwest. Okay, here's the flight map, and I'm right about the trajectory.

Here's a timeline to follow once the launch proceeds.