Leaderboard

Yeah, that's the impact of atmospheric diffusion of light and sometimes of being close to the horizon. It was NOT a flop at 70k...it was the biggest and brightest I ever saw. I've seen a number of comets, many of which were not even visible on the surface, and they are sometimes pretty spectacular. Also, being very high allows you to see "sprites"...lightning-llike discharges going up into the atmosphere from the top of megacells. They are a bit rare but also neat to watch. For some reason they seem to be more common in NE Asia and off the Russian north pacific coast, or that's where I saw them more frequently.

In my case (over 20 years in the U-2), I never paid much attention to looking up. Most of the flying was in the daytime, and looking up for much of a 10 hour flight is boring. Additionally, in a pressure suit, the helmet hurts the neck. I did see a few, but they were just moving lights. Now comets, that was different. Because most (95%) of the obscuring atmosphere is below you, that point of light with a very small and indistinct blur for a tail that you see from the ground is a very bright center with an enormously long and distinct tail. The most impressive was Kahotek (sp?) back in the mid-70s. That one was incredible...it covered half the sky!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFOhBAH3zPA This is what happens when you go full retard.

Maxwell is down 12.5% for an O-3 with dependents...

Merry Christmas, BaseOps! Cheers! M2