Learning in the Sunshine State

STS 120, Discovery lifted off about 20 minutes ago. I didn’t feel like dealing with traffic to go down to the river to see it. We just went out the front door, which isn’t quite as good a view. Here’s what we see from the front yard. It’s a bit blurry, but it really does just look like a ball of fire in the sky. Dennis wanted me to take picture of the contrails, so I included them. I also threw in a few pictures of a December 2006 night launch, also Discovery. For that one, you can see, we did go to the river. (Pop Culture tidbit: The pilot of that December launch was the object of a certain diaper-wearing astronaut’s affections.)

STS 120 Ball of Fire in the Sky

Contrails View 1

View2

STS 116 December 2006 (Discovery)

Same shot, different camera setting

The fiery ball slowly gets smaller, and eventually just looks like a star in the sky. Only the very patient can watch until it disappears completely.

He was supposed to be doing this:

Instead he was doing this:

The final product looked like this:

He was surprised when I told him that many public and private school teachers don’t appreciate decorated math pages. He now has another reason to be glad he’s homeschooled.

Note: If you’re wondering about the eights, he doesn’t like the way he makes them. He keeps trying to make a “better eight”.