On May 23, 2005, at 9:43 AM, Nick Arnett wrote:
Not a spectacular sight, but pretty cool knowing what it was.
Dave Land was quite a bit closer and also saw it, so he might add his
impressions.
I got up a few seconds too late to see it from the beginning. I was
about 80 miles north of Vandenberg, so it probably would have been quite
impressive. When I got outside, I saw what I thought was a sodium vapor
street light on a nearby hill, so I walked a little further out into the
hotel parking lot. Only then, when it didn't move relative to the
background stars -- or rather, when it moved much, much more slowly than
it should have -- did I realize that what I was looking at was the
launch. It was pretty small already (maybe 1/5 of the moon diameter, or
about 6 minutes) and getting smaller rapidly.
I had talked to my 8-year-old son about it earlier in the evening, and
I'm actually pretty glad I didn't wake him up for it: it took my
knowledge of what I was looking at to make it interesting. To a kid, it
would have been not much more than an unusually orange star moving ever
so slowly towards another star and getting smaller as it did.
He's watched satellites with me a couple of times, so I know that he has
some tolerance for underwhelming celestial events, but probably not at
0320.
As it was, the weekend was a real bust for Ryan: we drove down to
CalArts in Valencia from San Jose (about 7 hours' drive and back) to see
his cousin graduate from film school. For a school that has graduated
the likes of Tim Burton, Ralph Eggleston, Ed Harris, Brad Bird and John
Lasseter, they sure don't know how to produce a graduation ceremony, at
least not one that keeps a reasonably bright 8-year-old entertained. A
drum circle. Some Alanis Morissette wannabe singing "L.A., L.A., L.A.,
what have you done to me?" Grey-hairs accepting their honoris causae.
3-1/2 hours ... and only *then* his cousin cross the stage.
Anyway, the launch was, well, an unusually orange star moving ever so
slowly towards another star and getting smaller as it did.
Dave
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