missile test


Message posted by gary on October 15, 2002 at 22:07:41 PST:

Just getting back, I expected to see a bunch of posts regarding a missile test that could easily be seen from the Groom area Monday evening sometime between 7PM and 8PM. I was camped out near Queen City Summit, looking towards the base, but noticed a missile trail out of my right eye. [That is, looking towards the north.] The trail looked pretty normal, except that it appeared to be heading towards the east, while most missile tests tend to be over the ocean. What was really interesting was what I guess was a second stage of the missile. The trail got much wider and very bright, leaving a huge white "rod" in the night sky. This rod was formed in about 10 seconds, i.e. slow enough to look at it being created.

I did have a camera with me (duh!), but it was loaded with slow slide film. I put in a roll of 400 speed black and white and took two photos handheld, leaning on the truck, at 0.5 second exposes. They should show the first vapor trail and the larger trail. Then I set up the tripod and took some photos of the "rod", which seemed to linger in the sky for about 10 minutes. These photos were done over a longer exposure (i.e. 20 to 30 seconds), which should allow the surrounding to appear in the photo so that it will be possible to "place" where the photos were taken.

Come to think of it, there are hills near Rachel that block the view to the north, but this events was quite high in the sky, so someone in Rachel should have seen it if they happened to be looking in the right direction.


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