Shuttle Endeavor, February 15, 2000, 23:11 UT

I observed the passage of the shuttle in the northern sky with a pair of 9x63mm binoculars. The movement in this drawing is from left to right. What I saw was a bright object, the shuttle itself, but also off to one side was a faint but very noticeable extension, the end of which trailed off behind the extension. At first I thought that what I was seeing was the radar boom extending off one side of the shuttle, with the trailing part behind the boom the radar itself (note in this drawing the radar boom and radar appear brighter then actually observed to make them easier to see in the drawing). A few days after this observation I learned that others had reported seeing similar detail in telescopes and binoculars.

Click left arrow below to view solar eclipse sketch or right arrow to view deep-sky sketches.