Another Rocket Shot

Was fortunate enough to shoot another rocket launch for a technical publication.
Here is the link to the launch pictures and some surrounding shots
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/09/gallery-the-successful-launch-of-the-antares-rocket/

I will post some shots here of the surrounding wildlife shortly.

Liftoff

As it turns out, shooting a rocket launch is more difficult than one might think. For starters, we were two miles away from the launch site. My best lens, the 80-200mm f/2.8 I use for concert work just wasn't going to cut it. Then you have the issue of it being perfectly dark outside, interrupted by the night becoming daylight for 5 seconds when the rocket motors ignited.

I was fortunate enough to borrow a 500mm reflex lens but even with that, I couldn't fill the frame as much as I wanted. As night wore on, and I waited for T-minus zero, the temperature dropped rapidly, causing condensation to form on everything, lens included. This caused problems, as you can see a halo around the image, and it's somewhat overexposed. That's because I didn't know what setting to use, so I made some educated guesses, talked with a few other people, and went from there. I don't feel too bad however, a number of people with far more experience than I got absolutely nothing but completely blown out images. 

Anyway, I'm now hooked on rocket launches, and want to shoot another one.

Grabbing the Bull by the Horns

This is the Minotaur-V rocket, a re-purposed Peacekeeper ICBM, sans nuclear MIRV warhead. Inside the 80+ foot rocket is LADEE, the Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer, which is heading to the moon to examine the contents of the atmosphere (or, more correctly, exosphere) and run other tests.

The launch was slated for 11.27pm Friday night and NASA's flight facility was swarmed with approximately twenty thousand visitors. I was part of the media, a group of about 50 people who had special access to get close to the rocket and then for the launch.

The weather was absolutely perfect, not a cloud in the sky and the winds were nil. Launch went right on schedule.

This was shot with a 17-35mm len on my Nikon d2x.