Fire in the Sky

On our way to Tucson for Brian & Marsha's wedding a couple weeks ago, the pilot mentioned over the intercom that there was a meteorite coming into the atmosphere on our side of the plane. Cool. Ken snapped these before we realized the "meteor" was coming from the ground rather than the sky. The pilot came back on the loudspeaker without any answers but said that he was calling it in. A couple minutes later, he came back on saying it was a rocket launched from a desert base near LA. Apparently, you could see it all the way from the ground in Tucson -- as radio announcers were still talking about it when we landed. Here's the sequence. Originally, it looked just like a comet (but coming from the ground; we missed that picture while looking for the camera). Then all of a sudden you saw a burst that then lengthened and diffused with time. Pretty cool.

First one with the tight cone:


Lengthening:



Lengthening & Diffusing:


You could see the red trail almost until we landed. It was totally mesmerizing.