Combined, Houston Chronicle and Houston Post photographers probably captured around 1,000 images related to the Challenger disaster, which took place 30 years ago today.

On that frigid morning in Florida Francis R. Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe died sometime after the shuttle broke apart 73 seconds in flight.

In a speech a few days later at NASA's Johnson Space Center, President Ronald Reagan touched on a recurring scene that pops up in the photos you see here.

"On the day of the disaster, our nation held a vigil by our television sets," he said. "In one cruel moment, our exhilaration turned to horror; we waited and watched and tried to make sense of what we had seen."

At the same time, you'll also see a wave of support in these photos for the astronauts lost.

Actually they were more than astronauts to the Houston area. They were our neighbors and friends.