I took your photo, and adjusted the color levels just a bit to bring out details. The result is quite compelling to support the 'yawing shuttle' theory. I've attached the result. If you have an image viewer that allows you to zoom in on the image, you can see what Joe's pointing out. FWIW, -- Dan Hanks On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Joe Bauman wrote:
Dear friends, I was surprised to read the note Patrick posted, quoting a UPI investigation as saying roughness on Columbia's left wing might have caused it to fly sideways during reentry. Until now I was hesitant to show many people my own views of the reentry because they are so awful. But I thook this picture (c) 2003 with what amounted to a 300 mm. lens (200 mounted on a digital camera whose configuration increased focal length to 300, say the photographers). Here is a cropped and enlarged portion of my best view. It's the very end of a squiggle of a purple line that is the Columbia's ion trail and its own glow, recorded as I tried to hold the camera steady. At the instant the shutter closed it seems to have taken what amounts to a snapshot of the Columbia at the top of the "contrail." I think you can just barely make out Columbia at the end. The "contrail" line is curved even though the shuttle actually went straight across the sky, because of my inability to hold the camera steady. One way of reading these tiny details -- almost like looking at it with averted vision -- is that Columbia is turned nearly sideways. Admittedly, the curvature artifact I introduced during exposure would have distored the view, but not that much. I sent a version of this view to NASA, and they thanked me and did not get back in touch for any of the other views so probably they don't think it's significant. Maybe this is nothing at all, but I wanted to share it with the group. -- Joe