Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery - STS - 128

Last week, I spent roughly three days doing reseach/planning, eight hours driving (split between two road trips) and stood around for another half dozen hours. All of that to make a single exposure that lasted for 167 seconds and had no chance for a do - over. The subject of all this effort was space shuttle Discovery as she and her crew launched from Kennedy Space Center for mission STS - 128.

Here's the result :

Completely worth the effort.

Of course, since the above image was made with a camera sitting on a tripod, I was also able to do some shooting with a telephoto lens for a more traditional liftoff image.

Finally, I had planned to attach my point and shoot camera to the tripod and shoot some video as well, but the crappy flexpod I bought that day fell apart on me. So, I ended up setting the little camera directly on the ground and crossing my fingers. I couldn't get a clear view of the sky, but figured it was worth a shot anyway. The resulting video falls squarely in the "Happy Accident" category.

(At about 1 : 50 seconds into the video, the rumble that starts is the sound from engines. It took that long for it to get to where I was shooting from. Prior to that, the all the rocket noise is coming from the audio on the radio. The announcer was obviously much closer.)

I can't find the link to the video. I'll add it back in when I get a chance to pull it from the archive

To give credit where it's due :

Thanks to Dr. T.S. Kelso from celestrak.com for helping make sure I was setup to capture the entire flight path.
For a great set of notes on shooting launches, visit this page on phototrek.org .
K4GCC (146.940) retransmission of the NASA audio which you hear in the video.
M.C. for letting me borrow some additional gear.