The Last Shuttle

OK, here they are, my pictures from the last shuttle launch earlier today. I can't believe they got it off the ground. The weather looked horrible, the sky was full of thick grey clouds, the wind was whipping along at a good clip and the air was hazy and damp. But I guess the folks at NASA didn't want to let down the million or so people who gathered to see the final launch.

That's Atlantis from I think 12 miles away shot with a 400mm lens and a 2x teleconvertor on a crop-sensor 7D Canon digital camera. It'd be a great shot if not for the haze in the air.

Note how the orbiter is rotating around as these shots progress. It spun around fairly quickly this time, much faster than I remember it doing during other launches.

I was on a pier behind a new bridge when I was shooting. I caught this when it came out over the top of the bridge. Not long after, she entered the thick clouds and we didn't see the orbiter again.  (If you want to see what the shuttle would have looked like on a much nicer day, check out my shots from 2008.)

Blasting Off

I'm leaving soon to head over to the Space Coast and hopefully shoot the last shuttle launch. Last time I saw Atlantis take off, in November of 2009, I had passes to get on Cape Kennedy, so I was only about 7 miles away at lift-off. I won't be that close tomorrow, but I still hope to get some good shots. Now if they can just get it off the ground... Weather is only showing about a 30% chance of favorable launch conditions, but I have to try.

Another Shuttle Launch

Did you see the shuttle Discovery launch this morning? I didn't try to go over this time, but I was able to glimpse it outside my condo in the pre-dawn hour. When I got to work, the sun was just coming up and it lit up the smoke trail from the early launch. Those high-altitude winds do some weird things to what starts out as a fairly straight line.

Tourists

I recently got hold of this picture taken when I went to see the shuttle launch last year. You know how you go some place and they make you pose for a picture, then sell you that picture later on in the day? Well, this is one of those, taken at 6:30 in the morning as we arrived at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex. They herded us all in a row and blinded us with a bright flash that did nothing to illuminate the giant blue NASA logo in the background. I blame the photographer for that. That's my mom on the left, then Dad, me, and Charlene, a friend of the family. There's another shot here from later in the day, but it's not very good so I'll keep it for another day. A day far, far in the future most likely.

Eight Space Shuttles

I know you guys are getting antsy to see some space shuttle pictures, so here's a little composite I threw together. You can see space shuttle Atlantis on STS-129 this past Monday lifting off from pad 39-A at Cape Kennedy. Pretty cool, eh? I took these shots with my Rebel XSi set on manual at 1/400 of a second, f/8, ISO 200. I used a 400mm lens on a 1.6 crop sensor for a length of almost 650mm, and with a polarizing filter to boot. Oh, and did I mention I was 6 miles away? I thought these were awfully good for being so far away.

Breakthrough

When we arrived at Kennedy Space Center Monday morning, the sky was pretty thickly overcast. I began to worry that the launch would be postponed due to poor weather. However, it slowly broke up after about 10 am, but the sky never fully cleared. I guess a few clouds didn't really hurt anything, and may have even helped a little bit. I got this neat picture as Atlantis flew through a low cloud, lighting it up from the inside in a rather spectacular fashion.

Uh-Oh, Part 2

Well, bad luck just seems to follow me around some days. And it seems to be following even more closely lately. After losing my entire hard drive a week or so ago, yesterday I lost my camera. Well, I didn't lose it, but it no longer works. After shooting the shuttle launch as far as the separation of the SRBs, I turned my camera back towards the pad to get some pictures of the lingering steam and smoke. I didn't notice anything odd until the camera quit auto-focusing. I took my eye away from the viewfinder to see a message on the screen. Error 99, it said. Turn the camera off then back on, it said. But that didn't help, it just came right back. I'd seen an error 99 before when I rented an incompatible lens. Pulling the battery out for a second worked then, but not this time. I tried the battery, the battery holder, the lens itself, the memory card, nothing made a difference. Once I got back to a computer, I loaded up the pictures from the memory card (for a while I was worried that none of my pictures would be there, but they were OK). The last dozen or so pictures on the chip were obscured, as if something was in front of the lens, but I knew there had been nothing there while I was shooting. The three pictures you see here are the last three shots from the launch.

After much messing around with the camera itself and some internet searches, I finally discovered that it's a shutter problem. Digital cameras have shutters just like regular cameras. The shutter exposes the image sensor to light for the prescribed amount of time, just as it would expose film. Well, when I peek behind the mirror in my camera, I see the closed shutter when I should normally be able to see the image sensor. I've got a feeling the price of fixing the camera is going to be all too close to the price of a replacement camera.

I suppose I should be happy that my camera didn't break until after the launch. Five minutes earlier and I wouldn't have gotten any of the awesome pictures I did. But I'm still unhappy that it's broken. Anyhow, stay tuned for some of the more awesome final pictures from my camera.

Shuttle Atlantis

I'm dead tired at the moment, but I wanted to get something up quick. I just got home from watching the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. It went off without a hitch on the first try at the designated time. I was 6 miles away on a NASA causeway with 1846 other ticket holders. I got some pretty impressive pictures, of which this is just one. Stay tuned...

Tickets!

Well, it's official. I was finally able to secure tickets to a shuttle launch! So when Atlantis launches to the International Space Station on or about November 16th, I'll be in the audience. This ticket gets me to the closest publicly available viewing site, a causeway on the Banana River about 6 miles from launch pad 39A, actually on NASA property. I can picture the pictures now! I need to rent a good lens... This is a vastly different view of the launch in addition to being closer. I'll be looking to the north (north by north-east, I think) instead of east (OK, east by south-east...).

I think this is one of the last six shuttle launches, so time is running out to catch one. If you get the chance to see one, take it!

Scrub-A-Dub-Dubbed

Well, after sleeping in Lakeland for a few hours last night, then driving to Titusville at three this morning, I discovered that the shuttle launch had been scrubbed just after midnight thanks to a hydrogen leak. So much for a picture perfect countdown. It was a long way to go only to miss the big show, but I did get to shoot Endeavour on the pad, albeit from an awful long way away.


I did get to see the sun come up from the causeway, though. But I had to wait a couple of hours for even that to happen. Trust me when I say I was there early! When I finally got back to my house on the other coast, I slept for another four hours.

Re-Endeavour

I'm thinking about heading over to Cape Kennedy early tomorrow morning for the launch of space shuttle Endeavour. That's Endeavour above from the last time she shot into space back in November. This time, launch is set for about 45 minutes past sunrise, so it should make for some interesting pictures. This trip will involve getting up around 2 in the morning, so I'm hoping I don't loose my willpower between now and then. We'll see...

Enterprise

I can now add the space shuttle Enterprise to the list of shuttles I've seen. Though it never went to space, this is still considered the first space shuttle. Enterprise was used as a proof-of-concept vehicle. They dropped it at altitude and let astronauts pilot it in to be sure that such an unwieldy and unpowered beast could actually land as designed. It must have worked, because we're still flying space shuttles over thirty years later.

I saw this bird at the Air And Space Museum built by The Smithsonian near Dulles International Airport in Virginia. You hop on a shuttle bus after you've checked your bags (the shuttle costs $0.50 each way, by the way), and instead of wasting time in the terminal you get to see some impressive aircraft. Only problem is that my airline wouldn't let me check my bags more than four hours prior to the flight, and the shuttle only runs every 45 minutes. So the scheduling can be a little tricky. But it's worth the trip.

I think there are pictures out there of the original cast of Star Trek posing with this shuttle after they named it Enterprise. While I was at the museum, they were playing the new Star Trek movie on the Imax screen. Wish I'd had time to see it there.

Stay tuned for pictures of some of the other aircraft at this museum, including a Concord, an SR-71 Blackbird, and the Enola Gay!

Space Manatees

When you visit Kennedy Space Center, one of the things they go to great pains to tell you about is Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge. Turns out that most of the space center is set aside a a wildlife preserve. There are all sorts of wild areas that are home to interesting creatures on the base, and one of the ones we spotted on our tour were these manatees. They were right there is a canal just outside the bus. We stopped and watched them for a minute or so before proceeding on with the pre-planned part of our tour.

In the photo below, you can see two manatee shadows in the water, some train tracks and, in the distance, one of the shuttle launch platforms. No doubt, these manatees have a good view of launches. Those vertical lines you see in the picture are artifacts from shooting through the window glass. Sorry about that.

More Discovery

Here are a few more pictures from the shuttle launch yesterday. I drove the three hours over there, and it took me over six hours to drive home, so I guess I need to get as much mileage as possible out of these pictures. The shot above shows the shuttle to the left and the two solid rocket boosters after separation on the left. The two SRBs are actually falling into the Atlantic Ocean at the point, but Shuttle Discovery is continuing to move off into space. The curvature of the Earth is what makes it look like it's moving downward. This was probably the longest I've ever watched the shuttle after the launch. I read later that it was visible for more than seven minutes, and was as far north at New Jersey before it winked out of sight.

And three more pictures of that awesome smoke trail. I'm afraid none of my pictures really do it justice. It was just incredible, the way it caught the light and became more and more distorted as the upper level winds twisted it into a pretzel.

Discovery Is Go

Perhaps you heard there was a shuttle launch yesterday. Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off at 7:43 PM on it's way to the International Space Station, and I was there. It was about 15 minutes after sunset, so it was still pretty light out. But the light from that solid rocket fuel made everything else in the picture seem dark as night. Someday I'll get good at taking these pictures. I suspect that'll be right around the time they end the shuttle program.

I was well-enough prepared this time that I was able to slap on a shorter lens soon after take-off. So you get to see something other than a long tongue of flame behind an invisible shuttle.

I mentioned that the launch took place just after sunset. Not long into flight, the smoke plume entered the area where the suns' rays were still in the orange sunset color. Past that, the full illumination of the sun turned the trail a brilliant white, so it was quite possibly the most colorful shuttle launch ever.

This detail of the smoke trail in the area where the most color was shows the beautiful colors that are usually reserved for sunsets in some island nation you only ever get to visit once in your life.

Sunrise At Night

I got the opportunity to go see the space shuttle Endeavor launch last night, and what a light show that was! I was worried that I wouldn't get any pictures of it, because of the wind and the 14 mile distance. That, combined with the general difficulties of shooting at night had me worried, but I wound up getting a decent shot or two. Could have been better, but I was happy to get anything. This shot is just a few seconds after launch, so you can actually see the shuttle thanks to all the reflected light coming off of the steam clouds rolling out from under the gantry. Most of the other shots once it got in the air only show flame shooting out for hundreds of feet behind the shuttle, which isn't itself visible. Biggest drawback of the trip was the ride home, and the three hour traffic jam on a section of the ride that should have only taken about 30 minutes. And that was after we waited an hour for the traffic to clear. Oh, well, that's the price you pay, I guess.

Two For The Price Of One

As you may or may not know, there are currently two space shuttles on the launch pads waiting to blast off to space. I figured this was too good a photo opportunity to pass up, so I headed over to Cape Kennedy this past Sunday with telephoto lens in tow. Unfortunately, security is tight, and they wouldn't let us out to the usual shuttle vantage point to the East of the launch pads. You'll have to make do with three different viewpoints from something like one to seven miles away. And only one of those spots lets you actually see a shuttle without a gantry in the way. The top photo is from the causeway between Cape Kennedy and Cape Canaveral. Someday soon I hope to get a pass to shoot a launch from this spot, as it's the closest the public can get during a launch. It's $60 or so for admission, but at only 7 miles distant, it's half the distance from where I usually shoot. The detail down at the bottom is shot from this same spot, and I think that's Atlantis you can see quite clearly. It's Endeavor on the other pad, for those of you keeping score at home.

This view is from the observation platform near where the crawler takes the orbiters to the pad. It's four stories up, so this is probably the best picture of the three, and the light was just right when I shot this. However, both machines are hidden by their launch platforms.

This is the view from behind the Apollo/Saturn 5 center. Still quite a ways away, and the shuttles are still hidden from view.

And as I mentioned above, this is Atlantis on the pad and ready to go from about seven miles away. Don't mind that seagull in the picture, he'll be gone pretty quick when they fire up those solid rocket boosters.

The Launch

As promised, I took a drive over to Titusville today to see the shuttle launch. When we first parked the car, it was pouring down rain and you couldn't see 50 feet out the window of the car. We went and got some lunch, and when we got back, the weather was near perfect. We had less than two hours to go until launch, and the time flew by. I actually got the right launch pad this time, unlike last time when I was zoomed in on the wrong pad. The shuttle took off from 39A, which is the one to the right. I need to remember that for next time... For the longest time there wasn't much to see, just a hazy launch pad, almost 12 miles away.

Suddenly, there was smoke! I thought it was still a minute or two before the actual liftoff time of 5:02 PM, but I was wrong.

More smoke, and you can just barely see the tip of shuttle Discovery peeking above the launch tower.

And there she is, Discovery, after clearing the launch tower and just about ready to start rotating around and assuming the correct orientation for orbital flight.

Compare this picture to the previous one and you can see that the shuttle has rotated about it's axis. It's amazing to me that they can control all that power.

The roll maneuver continues as Discovery emerges from behind a low cloud.

She finally got into the right position and from there on out it was just foot-to-the-floor raw power. This is probably the best picture of the day, with the nice blue sky, the colors of the shuttle are close to correct (and dark) and the fire is beautiful!

Eventually, my 400mm telephoto lens with 1.5X auto-converter and 1.6X digital cheat couldn't keep up with the rapidly-climbing bird. She's just a dot at the top of a flame that's leaving a trail of smoke across the sky.

You may recall that I got a new camera last weekend. Well, I put it and the old one both to good use this weekend. I used the new one with the long lens to capture the close-up shots you saw first, then I used the old camera with one of the new IS lenses to capture these two shorter shots, so you can see as little bit better what the launch looked like to the naked eye. I remembered that when I shot the launch last year, I'd hated the fact that I couldn't zoom out and capture the smoke trail like I wanted. But not this year. The shots above and below are both great and give you a sense of what the launch looked like to the people on the ground. I always wondered why I saw professional photographers lugging around more than one camera at big events. Now I know. There's no time to be swapping lenses when things are happening in a hurry. And there's no such thing as a truly do-it-all lens. Not that I intend to carry two cameras around all the time, mind you. But it's a great trick for when the situation demands it.

I guess there are only a few shuttle launches left until they retire the fleet. I hope I get the chance to go to more of them. It's really an awesome sight and a great photo opportunity.

The Countdown Is On

In about 24 hours, the shuttle Discovery is supposed to fly again. I'm hoping to be able to get over there for this launch, so keep your fingers crossed for me. The grainy picture above is a greatly enlarged and very enhanced version of a shot I took of Atlantis during the last launch I went to. It's not the best picture, but what do you expect for a picture taken from over 11 miles away?

11.77 miles! That's about as close as you can hope to get without an on-base pass, which I'm not going to get. But I may try a different angle this time, maybe that Southern causeway...