STS-131 Landing (from 31 miles)

Yeah, it's kinda far away, but this morning my coworkers and I headed outside (Jacksonville, FL) to watch as the shuttle passed by about 8-10 minutes before landing.

It was approximately 31 miles at it's cloesest vantage point, was traveling over 3400 mph when it was closest, and was about 22 miles in altitude and falling.

I calculated (based on Nasa's website) the places to look and the path of the shuttle, as well as the expected sonic boom time. While standing outside, someone asked will we be able to hear the sonic boom?, and about 5 seconds after that, pretty close to my guesstimate, the boom came. It was spectacular!

Still a very neat capture!

That's so cool. I hope a flight lands at Edwards sometime soon.

Thanks Elizabeth! I accidentally had my camera at -2 stops which actually helped a lot.

SkyBaby: while I don't want to deny you any landings at Edwards, I of course want to be greedy and watch many more nearby. Good luck and I hope you watch a future landing - only three more to go!

Treasure it ! Last time i saw the shuttle like this was a short time before the Columbia Disaster over Texas . Since then i never look . I did see the route this morn on the news and it would have been too far north here to see anyway .

Celestron - my boss won't look for the same reasons. However, you've still easily got me one-upped with your spectacular images of far, far away galaxies, nebulae, etc.

Very cool to see, shame they're ending the shuttle's pretty soon, before I could make a trip down there to see a launch for sure.

Very nice. I was hoping for an Edwards landing as well but we didn't have any luck this time. Thanks for sharing.