an object is coming off the orbiter in this video taken by a California observer.
He reports the object appearing at 5:53:45 AM PST.
He was observing the object from Mt. Hamilton, CA
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/842330/posts?page=5#5
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Rick Baldridge Mount Hamilton, CA
"I have seen, photographed and video taped four Shuttle reentries over California, starting with STS-63. A photo of the reentry of STS-73 is posted at:
http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/rickbaldridge ...
(If you have trouble with this long link, go to
http://photos.yahoo.com/rickbaldridge
and click on "Astronomy Stuff" album, and then the second picture. The Yahoo page was down a few days ago but is working again.)
Believe me, NONE of them show even the slightest indication of brightenings in the trail or small pieces coming off.
Yesterday was a bad day for me (and all of us.) I video taped the reentry for Mt. Hamilton, CA and took two photos. Naked-eye, we didn't notice anything too unusual, but I was spending most of my time looking through the video camera viewfinder. We thought we had just seen another spectacular NORMAL reentry. Only an hour later when I got home did I learn of the tragedy that occurred minutes after we saw the Shuttle go by.
When I looked at my video, there were very faint but definite pieces coming off, with the first piece seen on the video at 5:53:45am PST +/- 1 second. A had made a time-hack as I always do to obtain timings, and this hack was synchronized to WWV. As far as I know at this time, I was the furthest west observer on the reentry track to get a video.
NASA has been given a copy of the tape. They may want the master of course to analyze further. I also took two still photos, one through a 16mm lens that shows the entire visible trace of the Shuttle and BOTH photos show definite brightenings in the trail that corresponde to brightenings the video shows. Again, I have NEVER seen this activity before STS-107. The photos will be scanned today and posted, after I get a copy to NASA."
"...It's been a very busy 36 hours trying to get data reduced and info to NASA on the video and pictures I took.
The two still photos I took from Mt. Hamilton (right next to the 40" dome at Lick Observatory -- coords N37° 20.498' W121° 38.579' Alt 4230 feet WGS84 datum) have been scanned (rather poorly by myself, I might add!) and annotated. I've posted them at:
http://photos.yahoo.com/rickbaldridge
Click on "Astronomy Stuff" album.
I won't speculate at this point -- we've had quite enough of that already. Let's just say the photos, videos and eyewitness accounts definitely show that something was amiss while COLUMBIA was over California. With this being my 4th observed reentry, I have a lot of experience looking over photos and videos that I've taken and nothing unusual showed on the previous three.
Funny thing was, several of us who saw STS-107 Saturday morning didn't see anything we would call really "unusual" using the naked-eye. The only comments were that the "color" seemed a bit off, perhaps more "orange", but that could be explained by a variety of causes. Only later when we looked at the video and developed the slides did we see something funny was going on. This leads me to believe that the average eyewitness in California may not have seen something going on when in fact it was. Hooray for video cameras..."
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Baldridge's observation is confirmed by an observer several hundred miles away in Huntington Beach, CA
Mark Bixby Huntington Beach, CA
"[Name}Mark Bixby
[Observing Location] Huntington Beach, CA
[Equipment Used] 7x35 binoculars
From about 5:53 a.m. until about 5:55 a.m. the Shuttle was easily visible from the Graham Street/Wintersburg Channel bridge. Using 7x35 binoculars, I observed quite close to the horizon an orange point of light with a faint, trailing orange contrail.
There were a few periodic "bursts" in the contrail where it got somewhat brighter and then dimmed back down to the average brightness. I have never witnessed a Shuttle reentry before, so I have no idea if those brightness bursts were normal. I could not perceive anything falling off of the Shuttle and forming a separate contrail.
According to the post-disaster news conference, the first sensor failures in the left wing of the Shuttle occurred at 5:53 a.m. Did this have anything to do with the bursts I saw? I have no idea...
[Still Images or Video] No."
