Stars Fell On Arizona Last Night

Or did they?

As you might have guessed, since my last post I've been busy...eating and running. The eating part's been pretty boring but I've been seeing all sorts of interesting things while running. In my last post it was javelinas; luckily I haven't had any more close encounters with any of them since I last wrote. 

However, as I was wrapping up my pre-dawn run early this morning, I happened to look up and see THIS sight, which I was able to capture with my iPhone:

I had an immediate flashback to 1986 when I was watching the television reports of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Was it another shuttle? I thought that program had ended. Was it a plane? If so, it was hanging suspended in mid-air, because the bright "tail" wasn't getting any longer, nor was the end of it moving. Was it an alien invasion? If so, at least fortunately it was far east of us. Was it headed to Washington to capture some errant politicians and whisk them away on a one-way trip to Endor? One could only hope!

What was particularly interesting was the rainbow effect in the plume at the top. The smaller white speck in the upper right-hand corner of the shot is the crescent moon. 

Of course when I got home I felt immediately compelled to Google "strange light in Arizona sky." I didn't even wait until after I had recorded my running route and mileage in my journal! 

It turns out that the light was actually not over Washington, nor was it a close encounter of an extraterrestrial kind. It was a missile test over New Mexico. 

So no stars fell on Arizona last night after all. But for a few brief moments a spectacular bit of extra pizazz was added to the sunrise, and it is no exaggeration to say that the Missile Test of 2012 put the 1986 Halley's Comet Fly-by to shame.