Fascinating, frightening missile launch trail I shot tonight outside D’s. When Vandenberg AFB shoots off a big rocket we get these, usually in the early evening. As a child I was terrified of them because I thought it was the beginning of a nuclear war. Now I’m just pissed off because they’re testing a dumb expensive antimissile system.
In any case, it stops everyone in their tracks for a bit to consider the huge thing in the sky we just made.
Be My Blog 
First time I saw this was when I was at UCLA, and in my stupidity of a skeptical but nominally bible-believin’ conservative Christian, I was pondering if I was seeing some sort of sign of the end of the world, and Michael the archangel was about to come riding through a tear in the sky.
Thank god I grew up.
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You might have been right!
Certainly if the world *does* end it’ll look a lot more like that than like a medieval painting full of saints!
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WOW. That is some creepy shit. And yet beautiful in a way.
But mostly creepy.
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That is amazing. What is the light source illuminating the trail? Or is it incandescent gas in space? Was the rocket spiraling or has it had time to dissapate? Can you actually see the rocket going up? The thought of this just sends me back to my Ray Bradbury!
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or maybe watch “October Sky” again!
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It is my professional opinion that that particular missile didn’t work.
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From my mother’s house in Ensenada it lights up a big hill in the distance. She believes Martians are landing when this light shows up. The last time it happened, she called me to say “the Martians were here again”.
Alrighty!
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SURFACE TO AIR….eh
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Very cool. A couple days ago, the Astronomy Picture of the Day was a similar photo from about the same angle/time: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050928.html
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