dcn@ihuxl.UUCP (Dave Newkirk) (08/07/85)
At 9:37 pm on August 2, I watched the shuttle pass overhead from my backyard in suburban Warrenville. It appeared in the northwest, moving toward the southeast. When I first saw it, it looked like a comet (!), with a bright head and a faint tail/contrail behind it. As it moved overhead, the tail shortened to a fuzzy area around the shuttle, and then moved ahead of it as it passed the zenith. Then it suddenly faded away, leaving a dim point where the shuttle was. At first I thought it was a trail left in the upper atmosphere, but then when the trail shortened, I changed my theory to a reflection of sunlight off the wings or a byproduct of one of the experiment packages. Since it seems to have faded as it moved in to the Earth's shadow, I concluded that it must have been reflected sunlight. It sure was bright! -- Dave Newkirk, ihnp4!ihuxl!dcn