Replies

Just saw on KTVU out of the Bay area that some kind of burnt debris was found in South SF and there are 2 dozen reports of debris. Also showed the home video of a piece coming off Clolumbia over San Jose. The one piece they had in hand was about the size of a almond kernel and looked man made. Of course it could be charcoal... Look for the KTVU web site. I haven't checked it yet.

Could be melted oxidixed metal. (slag)

The intriguing California observation of Columbia's descent was made by Anthony Beasley, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology's Owens Valley Radio Observatory east of the Sierra Nevada.

Beasley said he was contacted by a NASA official on Tuesday.

"They're just starting to integrate all the data they've received," he said.

Beasley, his wife and mother-in-law watched Columbia from the driveway of his home in the remote town of Bishop. He reported seeing flashes and trailing objects, including one final distinct event in which something burning appeared to separate from the shuttle.

Beasley, program manager for the Combined Array for research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy at the Caltech observatory, wrote a report on his observation two hours later. It included details of his location, visibility conditions and the shuttle's position in the sky using approximate degrees of azimuth and elevation.

He also estimated the duration of each flash or "pulsing" and the change in brightness.

The first flash occurred 10-15 seconds after the orbiter was first sighted, Beasley wrote.

"Possibly saw secondary material in trail immediately after," he noted. "At time I thought -- it must have lost a tile (I was aware the shuttles routinely did when they landed, no idea what that would look like etc.)."

He described a second event that occurred 10-20 seconds later.

"There was clearly a new trail formed after this event, directly behind the orbiter (i.e. the second trail was parallel to and contained within the main trail). "

"My impression was that it was more than one piece, i.e. that there was a main piece and a few smaller bits (2-3?). They fell behind quickly, taking a few seconds to fall ... behind and then fade from sight, with some suggestion that they were falling just before vanishing."

Beasley wrote that the third event was the brightest.

"Very clear view of object detaching, forming separate trail. Looked like orbiter dropped a flare or something. Bright secondary object quickly fell out of main orbiter trail, generated its own trail for a few degrees. ... It took some time to fade from sight (5 seconds?)," he wrote.

Beasley said in an interview that he is not an authority on the shuttle but was aware that shuttles do lose thermal tiles in flight, which he noted in his report, particularly in reference to the last event.

"At the time I did wonder whether something that major would be a tile. My wife asked me what the things coming off were, I replied I thought they were tiles," he wrote.
Copyright 2003 by KTVU.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

thanks much for the bump, tb

see#137 and follow the directions, downlad 3 files to disk, and play them, full screen mode