Offlede beats employer to photo of Atlas 5 rocket launch

Taken at 200mm.

I blew this one up.

This post mainly is to see if I could beat the FLORIDA TODAY space team to the punch. I posted this photo of the Atlas 5 rocket to my Floridatoday.com blog 10 minutes after the 4:12 p.m. launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. If I hadn't talked to my roommate on the way back into the house near Wickham Park in Melbourne, it would have been earlier. As of 4:30 p.m., The Flame Trench blog hadn't posted a photo (nothing like a little friendly internal competition, right?). Today, The Offlede is the lede.

And considering how easy it was, I should be the lede more often: I grabbed my camera one minute before the launch, ran outside and snapped a few photos without a tripod. I'm actually surprised they turned out all right.