Thanks, Jim. I want to use this in my story. Where do you live? I saw it too but didn't get as great a view as you and your wife. -- Joe
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I would like Patrick to respond first but he must be tied up right now. My expierence was as follows.
I met Patrick and others at exit 23 outside of St. George about 6:00 AM along with my wife and 4 year old grandson. We went to a good observation point and Patrick and I set up our cameras. There were about 10 others inour group there. Patrick set his up with a telephoto (film) and he suggested that I set mine up wide angle (digital). Patrick kept us informed when to watch for the shuttle. The Shuttle approached where and when he said it would to the West or North West about 7:56 (+ or ñ a minute). My camera was set at f2.8 open for 8 seconds. I took my first shot. The thing was beautiful, straight as an arrow, obviously high, and moving fast, and way faster than any jet airline I had ever seen. The Shuttle glowed with an indescribable orange glow.
By the time the first shot ended I could tell the Shuttle was on top of me so I shot straight up. I touched off the camera the looked up just in time to see a noticeable increase in glow, not only in brightness but also in width of the contrail. Later, Patrick referred to the event as a flare. The shot ended and I had to turn the camera 180 degrees, pointed towards the eastern horizon and shot off another picture.
The whole time my wife was using my Galileo binoculars 15X70s. Sheila, my wife, saw the bottom of the space shuttle with 15x Binos at approximately 300,000 feet and could see swirls of flames or balls of heat coming from off the tiles. She would compare it to when someone sucks on a cigarette the end glows and there are sparklies and it keeps getting brighter as they suck. While she was watching, she said, ìI see flames.î We understand that this was our first experience observing the re-entry; we are inexperienced and were unalarmed at the site. Sheila wants to be cautious because they werenít like licking flames, just a growing brighter glow like a cigarette. We donít know if what we saw was normal. She could not see the individual tiles but she could see a lot of dynamic activity or movement on the bottom (donít blow this out of proportion, maybe normal). She noticed this at about the 10 oíclock position to the 12 oíclock position relative to our location. She didnít see anything fall or any debris. She did NOT notice the flair per se that I photographed.
Jim Gibson
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Joe Bauman science & military reporter Deseret News bau@desnews.com (801) 237-2169