Zooming out and enjoying the scenery for Atlas V, Juno launch

An Atlas V rocket carried NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft into orbit early Friday afternoon. I watched from my favorite place, Playalinda Beach at Canavaral National Seashore. It's Brevard County's northernmost and most remote beach that's often known for nudity at its most remote parts.

This was the best-attended Atlas V launch I've ever witnessed at Playalinda. I waited in a long line in my car at the gate. And all the parking lots were jammed. I'm suspecting that had something to do with the fact that NASA's space shuttle was recently retired, and this is the best we can do here on the Space Coast.

Aside from Jetty Park for Delta II launches (of which there are few these days), Playalinda is the best place to view a rocket launch -- at only a little more than 4 miles from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Once you park your car, you have to walk (or run, like I did) a mile southward on the beach to get to the closest spot. But the trek is enjoyable and worth it.

Surf was pounding me as I stood in waste-high water and took these photos. The waves were slightly elevated because the remnants of Tropical Storm Emily were churning the Atlantic Ocean.

I have a tendency to use my largest lens for rocket launches (a 500mm), but I decided to take it down a notch for this launch and use my 18-200mm. It was totally worth it. I was able to capture the scene around the launching rocket, instead of just the rocket itself. Above is the closest shot I got of the rocket in flight.

This Atlas V rocket was fixed with five solid boosters (the 551 configuration), which gave off the smoke trail. Such a long, arcing contrail makes a launch quite beautiful against a clear blue sky. All the engines also gave off a very pronounced rumble. I heard many people say it was even better than a shuttle launch -- mainly because the general public can get so close to the Atlas V (4 miles, as opposed to 13 miles for a shuttle launch).

The sky was clear, aside from this line of clouds that started forming north of the launch pad. I believe the people on this boardwalk were special guests of NASA, as it leads to the Air Force watchtower overlooking the fenceline on the beach. (The beach in front of the launch pad, of course, is blocked off to all comers.)

After the rocket was well on its way toward orbit, its wind-whipped contrail created some interesting shapes in the sky. This one sort of looks like a fish.

And this one looks like a pretty bow.

Some showers quickly popped up -- fortunately, after the launch. I stopped at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge to take a quick pic of the scene along a dirt-surfaced, swamp-lined roadway called Gator Drive or Gator Boulevard or Gator Trail. Something like that.

Happy July 3, a month late

A month after the fact, I've decided to share my photos of a July 3 fireworks show at Cocoa Beach. This is when the display started, when clouds were still visible in the background.

This is my favorite shot from the night.

The show was at Shepard Park, a popular beach near the "world famous" Ron Jon Surf Shop.

The beach was fairly crowded. Many people had been setting off their own fireworks before the professional display. Which is, of course, illegal in Florida -- unless those fireworks were being used for "agricultural" purposes.

My camera was on a tripod, and most of the exposures I took were about 2 seconds long.

Because of dry conditions, a ban against fireworks had been in place a week before Independence Day. But with these barges far out into the Atlantic Ocean, I doubt wildfires were a concern.

After this photo, I spent the next hour trying to get out of Cocoa Beach. Traffic was horrific.

A hazy final shuttle launch and a hazy future

I wasn't permitted to get close to the launch because it would've meant getting stuck in traffic and being unable to respond to and cover breaking news, which is my job. So I went here, to a high point along South Tropical Trail on Merritt Island. The haze was too much, though.

The final space shuttle launch, of Atlantis, was disappointing photographically because clouds once again obstructed my view. It's also disappointing simply because the shuttle program was one of two things that made Brevard County interesting and exciting, and now they're both gone.

The mother of all mothership clouds

Click for full panorama. We've had a few thunderstorms over the past few days on the Space Coast. The best was this one on Friday, which formed a really nice shelf cloud by the time it reached me on the Pineda Causeway.

This kind of formation is pretty typical of Central Florida storms, but it's one of the best I've seen this year.

As I watched the storm move over the Indian River, I saw a few flashes of lightning. It wasn't frequent enough to get a photo, though. The storm formed in the center of the state and moved eastward, but it was losing strength as it neared the shore.

By the time the wind picked up and it started to sprinkle, the storm had lost most of its power. There wasn't much rain and only a few rumbles of thunder.

I was trying to shoot this heron as it perched on the bank with the storm in the background, but I spooked it.

This guy named George had been fishing but closed up his van and took cover as the storm approached.

On Thursday, there was some lightning activity around sunset. I set out in front of Florida Today to capture some lightning, backdropped by a setting sun.

The storm dissipated, and I came up empty.

But then early Friday morning -- as a continuation of the storms that formed Thursday night -- I noticed some electricity in the air just before I had planned to go to bed. Instead, I ventured to the parking lot of this Baptist church, which is within walking distance of my apartment. I hung out with the police, who were using the lot to park while watching for speeding vehicles at 1:30 a.m., and took this long exposure.

Cloud scuds and a sign of the apocalypse

This scud reached outward in front of the storm. Must have scared the crap out of that bird.

Last week was extremely wet on the Space Coast. But while we had lots of rain, little of it was in the form of thunderstorms. The system on June 30 was an exception.

The rain moved in from the southwest as a horseshoe-shaped storm. And if God threw a ringer with it, I was the stake: Rain was coming in from three sides.

I followed the storm from the mainland over Pineda Causeway to the beach at Patrick Air Force Base, where someone had reported that a waterspout was forming. That turned out to be bogus: There were some incredibly low-hanging scuds, but there was no rotation.

The north part of the storm was unimpressive.

Looking south, I saw more structure.

Looking over the Indian River, the thunderstorm's leading edge.


After taking this photo, I told these children that they might be in the newspaper. They were quite excited. But the photo wasn't used. I'm sure they were disappointed.

When the rain started spreading over the ocean, a giant swarm of dragonflies flew overhead as they fled from the storm. Freaky. I was so amazed by it that I didn't take a photo of it.

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This is looking east, and as you can see, there's lots of rain. But there also was rain to the south and west. It soon clenched in and got me wet.