Whenever possible I always try to attend various launches from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and with no weather of notability happening in the plains – Renee and I decided to make a trip to the east coast and witness the launch of STS-119 from Titusville, FL.

I was worried earlier in the day when we arrived in Orlando because of a thickening cloud layer that was bringing back memories of the launch of STS-123 last March when the shuttle took off at 3:40 am and 15 seconds later disappeared into a cloud base.

The clouds cleared up about an hour before the launch and we had a perfectly clear sky to another amazing launch event. My only complaint was the fact that our arrival in Orlando didn’t happen at our original planned time and we just barely made it to the launch altogether, so our usual place to shoot from was well taken – leaving us to a small location along the sidewalk amongst the crowd of over 100,000 people. This put us and our cameras behind a tree and if you just looked from my photo alone, you would think that the shuttle launched straight out of the palm tree.

And here is one that Renee captured showing the moment of booster rocket seperation (darkened for detail). Notice the three bright objects, the larger being Discovery and the two smaller objects are the booster rockets falling away from the orbitor. Again due to twilight being the time of day that the shuttle blasted off from the launch pad, the angle of the sun brought with it some brilliant colors in the rocket’s exhaust plumes.

Perhaps the biggest treat of the evening though occured when a cloud formed form the shuttle’s exhaust (which is almost entirely water vapor) in a part of the atmosphere that is so high up that no weather actually exist there. Since the launch happened right at twilight, the tiny ice particles from this cloud was catching and scattering the rays from the setting sun – turning the cloud to a bright electric blue against a darkened night sky. Sticking around to shoot the amazing vapor trail formations has always been one of my favorite parts of any shuttle launch.

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