Spooky- we had never watched a re-entry by the space shuttle or
anything else before, and we chose this one. Columbia appeared as a
fairly bright fast-moving "star", with a faint trail of ionized gas
behind it, which rapidly disappeared into the sunrise. It
disintegrated over Texas a few minutes later. Columbia is the faint
horizontal line in the sky, 3/4 of the way up the image. A lousy
picture, but it will serve as my memorial to the seven astronauts
aboard, and to a legendary spacecraft.

6:56 am MST, February 2nd 2003
2 sec., f2.6, ISO 100, focal length 8.2mm
Cropped, resampled, rotated, contrast increased.