Starship Asterisk*

Discovery s Cloud

Explanation: The space shuttle orbiter Discovery is now docked with the International Space Station, some 350 kilometers above planet Earth. Last Monday, its launch to orbit was a beautiful one as it rose into clear, predawn skies at 6:21am EDT from Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A. Looking east, this time exposure was taken shortly after lift off from a marina about 13 miles west of the launch site in Titusville, Florida. It shows the dawn's emerging colors along the horizon, with wafting rocket contrails at the upper right. The bright streak surrounded by the remarkable, elongated, vapor cloud near the center of the image is the actual track of Discovery, arcing toward the horizon and its orbital rendezvous.

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Very nice!

Are those stars I am seeing in the background?

My mind is telling me I see Cassiopeia and the Ursa minor but they look some how distorted.

The sun rising in the west...

Pretty sure the description says we're looking east, there, DLH.

Is this a double exposure, why are the contrails separated far from the rocket track?

Has anyone noticed the two solid rocket boosters descending near the contrails? Very nice photo... thank you.

Hello,

I like APOD very much, and I look at the pictures every day.
But for some months, there is a little problem. The page is now too heavy, and the browser is at the bound of crash every time I load it.

Could you create a pagination ? By years, it would be great.

Thanks for you consideration.
Cordially, gnutix.

The illumination of the boats in this picture (looking east) suggests that the sun must be rising behind the camera, or, in the west.

DLH wrote:The sun rising in the west...

I, too, was puzzled by this, because the boats look like they are illuminated are our (west) side. It must be artificial light.

Thanks to all who appreciate and like our photo!

To clear some things up...

This was a single unedited 37s exposure shot on a Canon Rebel XTi. It was still pretty dark out, so those are stars in the background, but they might just be washed out because of the other lights. A couple are just hot pixels on the sensor. (This image was submitted unedited - we didn't apply any noise reduction or flat/dark/bias subtraction yet.)

Yes, we were facing East.

The "contrail" surrounding the shuttle's streak is a vapor cloud that formed around it as it continued toward space. I believe it is partly attributed to the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity phenomenon.

The launch was about 47 minutes before sunrise. So the orange glow in the distance is actually a case of the Belt of Venus which was featured in an APOD a couple days before ours. The illumination of the boats came from the orange glow of sodium vapor lamps at the marina.

Thanks,
Peter Nguyen