Vandenberg Launch

I was able to watch the Minotaur rocket launch out of Vandenberg which carried the military satellite called "Streak". From Tucson Arizona, we can see the rocket rise into the evening twilight sky despite it's being some 570 miles away. Murphy was definitely working against me tonight. First, I got a late start, then a schoolbus stopped me, then a traffic accident and finally, as I was pulling into an area far from where I wanted to end up, I saw the rocket rising into the sky behind some trees and bushes. I stopped at the end of the road and pulled my camera and tripod out and proceeded to take two pictures with my lens cap on - D'Oh! I didn't have time to carefully focus, so my first few images were not focused well and then when I put the zoom on and took a few more shots of the distorted lower plume, I discovered that there were some telephone wires in the way..... Sheesh, that Murphy is a devious character. Anyway, I put the images in my photoblog. Here are some thumbnails of them: