PEGASUS launch

by Bob Czerwinski


I hope all of you caught the PEGASUS launch. What a sight!

Wandered up to the roof of my Belmont office around 6:45pm, again checking out Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. A beautiful sight as always. Working with my non-backlit analog watch on (you remember those, right?), I couldn't tell the precise time, but I'd guesstimate that the launch was about 6:55pm.

I caught the flame just as it cleared the trees on my SW horizon (the .gif image was wonderful to work from), seemed to move from a very orange color to a yellow-orange'ish color as its altitude increased, and watched it climb with a pair of 7x35 binos. Beautiful trail behind it, too. Very clear 1st stage burnout and 2nd stage ignition.

When it hit sunlight, the plume just seemed to explode outward in ball shape ("Hey, get a load of the new planetary!"). From my position the plume went from yellow to green to blue in a very short time period, I'd say 30 seconds or so.

Kept watching for quite a number of minutes, and was finally rewarded by the 3rd stage ignition. Looked just like a comet heading for the southern horizon, with a beautiful plumed tail. Watched it as it disappeared into the trees to my south. Just amazing! I've *definitely* got to see more of these!!