Searching for "purple" in Google News

[avram]

There’s this amateur photographer in San Francisco who took photos of the Columbia as it went by. Supposedly one of his photos shows the some kind of odd purple light near the shuttle, described in some news reports as “a purple bolt”. Here’s an SF Chronicle staff writer describing the photo:

In the critical shot, a glowing purple rope of light corkscrews down toward the plasma trail, appears to pass behind it, then cuts sharply toward it from below. As it merges with the plasma trail, the streak itself brightens for a distance, then fades.

The photographer (whose name hasn’t been released, and who won’t be releasing the photos till after NASA’s had a look at them) said that the photos “clearly record an electrical discharge like a lightning bolt flashing past”. He also was originally quoted as saying that he “couldn’t see the discharge with my own eyes, but it showed up clear and bright on the film when I developed it”, but the Chronicle later clarified that he was using a digital camera, a Nikon 880. A product manager at Nikon has said that some customers have complained about purple aberrations sometimes showing up in their photos.

So, camera glitch? Alien attack? The Royal Canadian Space Force hopped up on amphetamines and looking for payback?

Update: Or, possibly not something hitting the shuttle at all, but burning debris breaking away from the shuttle.

Comments

[camwyn]

I kind of fancy the Royal Canadian Space Force idea, myself. After all, the Cigarette Smoking Man was secretly Canadian. As was the voice of HAL. . .

I'd better get over to Canadian World Domination and suck up to the Generals before something else goes boom.