Lights in the sky

If you live in SoCal there are always lights in the sky and if you have some time to stop and watch, they're running this way and that. Out here, we've got a never ending series of blinkin' and winkin' happening as flights bound for Burbank and LAX slide overhead near the county border.

Occasionally, we get a surprise.

As I left Pasadena last evening (after yet another day long meeting) around nightfall, I noticed a zig zag streak that was rather surreal. It was so thick and white that the darkness seemed wrong somehow and it appeared to be a giant crack in the sky. Had I any idea how to operate the camera in my new Treo, I'd have pulled off the road and snapped something. It looked like a missile launch but I was busy. Instead, I put it out of my mind (at freeway speeds, attention to the road is paramount).

I rode most of the way home in silence, just trying to finish dealing with all the input of the day. As I rounded the bend in Moorpark, I flipped on the radio and heard a slightly incoherent story on KNX about reports of 'lights in the sky' and then a description of the launch at Vandenburg.

I'd planned to go find a good image, but one found me first. TWC has a nice shot (is that Riverside to the north?) that looks like it was taken about twenty minutes before I noticed it.