Hi All: I had a fine view of today's Delta II/Iridium launch from Vandenberg AFB. I was on Santa Ynez peak, a 4,290 foot high mountain located 64 kilometers east-southeast of the pad. The sky had a very thin layer of clouds at about 25,000 feet with some haze near the horizon. It was also suprisingly warm (about 72 degrees F). It was clear enough for me to see the coast and I could either see the Delta II pad or a nearby structure on the base. A very busy air traffic corridor parallels the California coast and lies west of my viewing site. This morning there were several jets and contrails visible. At T-45 minutes I noticed that there were no planes or vapor trails visible in the west. This was obviously due to the airspace west of Vandenberg having been closed. I could easily see ignition of the solid rocket motors while the Delta was on the pad. The solids produced a very bright orange flame and a thick, white smoke trail. The vehicle climbed and the flame from the solids grew longer. After the last solid motors were jettisoned, the Delta II first stage created a hazy, mostly transparent contrail and was hard to see. I lost sight of the vehicle at about T+ 2 min. 20 sec. Shortly afterward I heard a distant rumble from the launch. A few minutes after that, I heard a faint popping noise from up in sky towards the west-southwest*. This may have been from the solid rocket motors. On my drive down the mountain, I saw three short, tadpole-shaped contrails in the sky towards the west-southwest. The thick end of the trails pointed downrange and were ring-shaped (they looked like the eye of a needle). These were probably caused by the jettison of the solid rocket motors. I took several photos. Hopefully I got at least one good photo. All in all, it was a nice show. Regards, Brian Webb *Rick Baldridge and I heard a similar popping noise from Santa Ynez Peak following last October's Titan IV launch. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 11 2002 - 18:58:03 EST