Friday's NASA Rocket Launch Will Be Visible From South Carolina to Maine

Tonight around 11:27 pm, if everything goes well, a colossal "Minotaur V" rocket will lance off a launch pad in Virginia in a geyser of flame. From there it will make a broad swoop along the East Coast, where observers from the Carolinas all the way past Maine will get a chance to watch it spray smoky fire through the night sky.

The rocket, which is carrying a NASA lunar probe called LADEE ("laddie"), will travel low at about 10 to 15 degrees above the horizon. People around the Wallops Flight Facility near Chincoteague, Virginia, will obviously have the best views (and aural experience – some blast-offs are so loud that NASA has a sound-suppression system to prevent acoustic energy from damaging shuttle parts). But folks willing to get away from a city's skyline clutter or climb to high places could witness it in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Greensboro, and other far-from-the-coast cities.