Cool photo with a great description.

Ben Sandilands, the Australian aviation blogger and journalist, about the launch:

Thanks to Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield, who was at a cruising altitude of maybe 400,000 metres at the time, this is what a real takeoff looks like.

No fuel saving namby pamby accountant friendly flexi-thrust waddle to the end of the runway mucking around which is our lot in most jet airliners these days.

This was real seat of your pants, er spacesuit, stuff, said to be blisteringly loud and much longer and more eyeballs through the back of their sockets pressure than a catapult launch from an aircraft carrier.

Silicon Republic reports:

The Soyuz spacecraft blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 8.43pm (GMT) yesterday and docked with the ISS after a journey that lasted under six hours.

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy along with Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) were the first station crew members to take this expedited route.

Instead of the standard two days it takes a Russian spacecraft to reach and dock with the station, the Soyuz crew arrived and docked with the ISS at 2.28am (GMT) after only four orbits of Earth.

They also provide a shot of the launch from a more traditional angle: