Category: Photos

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I caught this view of the clouds lit up by the setting sun out of the corner of my eye on the way home tonight, and decided that I had to turn around and find someplace with a relatively unobstructed view. The beach would have been perfect, but also would have taken too long. In a pinch, I picked the top of a hill along an east-west street.

At first I was reminded of a dragon, but as I watched it, I started thinking it looked like a bird. I was going to call it “Sunset Phoenix” until I realized it would sound like a sunset in Phoenix, Arizona. Neat, I suppose…but not as intriguing as a fire dragon.

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Update: If you’re looking for photos from Endeavour’s trip through the LA streets in October, I’ve got those too.

And that’s it. The final flight of the space shuttle has come to an end.

The last shuttle landing I saw was Discovery in 1988. My family went out to Edwards Air Force Base to watch it land. I posted a photo essay on the event last summer when the shuttle flights stopped.

The 1988 landing was a normal Shuttle landing. It landed under its own power, from orbit, and it was all business. We civilians camped out all night on a dry lake bed, kept outside a fence so far away from the landing strip we could barely see the shuttle without binoculars.

This time it was being carried by an airplane, from another airport. Safety wasn’t any more of an issue than a normal flight, so they landed at a regular airport. (Though it was escorted by military aircraft.) And since it was the last-ever shuttle flight, there was a bit of showmanship to the flight plan: Continue reading →

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Remember about a year ago when people were all freaked out about a supposed missile launch off the coast of Los Angeles, even though there was no sign of it on radar and no one claimed responsibility? Remember how it turned out to just be an airplane contrail seen head-on so that it looked vertical? (Actually, I’d bet you probably didn’t hear that part, did you?)

I was reminded of that when I saw this one today. Off the coast of Los Angeles again…pretty close to the airport.

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Last year for the Fourth of July, we drove down to the Redondo Beach Pier to watch the fireworks being launched over the bay. It was a good display, but the logistics of getting out there and back was a major mess. We were already uncertain about how to handle it this year, and then J fell asleep the moment we got in the car (after refusing to nap all afternoon).

So this year we decided to just find a hillside and see what we could see. We stopped at the end of a residential street, where we could see a few other people out watching. We couldn’t see the local fireworks, but if we looked inland, we could see we could see distant fireworks displays all along the horizon.

On the other side of the very narrow block, the hillside drops sharply, offering a clear view south and east, and a slightly obstructed view to the west. (It’s the same area as where I went to watch the sun rise after a lunar eclipse last December.) There were a lot more people crowded there, all watching the local display. The low-level parts were hidden behind a hill, but the higher ones were clearly visible. I put J on my shoulders so he could watch — he probably doesn’t remember seeing fireworks before. Every once in a while I’d look off in the other direction to see what was visible in some neighboring city.

Seeing so many fireworks at once in the distance made for a very different experience than seeing one display up close. Not only was it stunning, but it drives home the point that this really is something all Americans celebrate together.