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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Justin C who wrote (53171)	7/8/2000 12:41:51 AM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 71178

I just saw THE COOLEST thing. I was in the backyard with my binos, watching a scheduled Iridium flare, and I happened to look south. There was something in the sky that looked like a landing light sending a wide conical beam through fog. But the night is crystal clear. And in the middle of this beam was a narrower bright green beam. The light at the top was slowly moving. Y'know what it was? The Minuteman launching out of Vandenberg for that ABM test! I watched it in the binos to second-stage burnout. I think I saw the third stage kick in, but by then it was boogeyin below the treeline, headed west. The wide-angle white exhaust faded out fast, but the intensely green central plume persisted. I watched for the next half hour as the green exhaust trail smudged and shrank as Earth's shadow climbed up it. It looked a lot like what I imagine an aurora to look like. ...Wonder if the ABM test worked out. If not, what's "ha ha ha, losers" in Chinese?