Discovery Launch

We departed Tampa on the same evening that the shuttle Discovery departed Cape Canaveral! I wasn't sure if we'd be able to see it from the ship, but we could. There were a group of people with the same idea standing on the very back of the ship hoping for a glimpse. Just before shuttle launch time this jet was flying across the sky to the west and everyone turned around and was pointing and getting excited thinking this was the shuttle. I'd be pretty worried if the shuttle was flying horizontally across the sky with those rocket boosters!! Of course with my mega zoom lens I could see this was a jet....that may not have been so obvious with a naked eye.

Then we could see this to the east over the stern!!

If you click on this picture to make it bigger you can see the shuttle and the 2 white specks below it....the rocket boosters falling off...... I know it's just specks....but we thought it was pretty exciting to be able to see it from so far away!!

The smoke trail afterward.......you can just see the water in the bottom right corner of this picture.

Now we can say we've seen a shuttle launch!!