The pre-dawn sky over Florida briefly turned into something that looked almost otherworldly.
Early yesterday morning a Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral. About 23 km from the launch site, I captured this frame as the rocket climbed into thinner atmosphere.
At high altitude the exhaust plume expands rapidly in the near-vacuum and sunlight from below the horizon illuminates it from the side, creating the so-called “jellyfish effect.” The glowing bell shape is the expanding exhaust cloud, while the textured pattern in the plume above it comes from pressure waves in the exhaust as it adjusts to the surrounding atmosphere.
The two bright points inside the bell are the rocket itself and a burn event from the separated stage further downrange.
A brief but spectacular sight in the pre-dawn sky.
ILCE-1FE 600mm F4 GM OSS lens600mmf/4.01/2s800 ISO0.0 EV
regulator wrote:
The pre-dawn sky over Florida briefly turned into something that looked almost otherworldly.
Early yesterday morning a Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral. About 23 km from the launch site, I captured this frame as the rocket climbed into thinner atmosphere.
At high altitude the exhaust plume expands rapidly in the near-vacuum and sunlight from below the horizon illuminates it from the side, creating the so-called “jellyfish effect.” The glowing bell shape is the expanding exhaust cloud, while the textured pattern in the plume above it comes from pressure waves in the exhaust as it adjusts to the surrounding atmosphere.
The two bright points inside the bell are the rocket itself and a burn event from the separated stage further downrange.
A brief but spectacular sight in the pre-dawn sky. ...Show more →
This is just awesome.
Some years ago I was in Florida golfing with my bothers and there was a shuttle launch, we watched from the yard in Kissimee but I'll always regret not going to the coast or somewhere to get a proper view
johnahill wrote:
This is just awesome.
Some years ago I was in Florida golfing with my bothers and there was a shuttle launch, we watched from the yard in Kissimee but I'll always regret not going to the coast or somewhere to get a proper view
It was great to witness.
Here's a long exposure of the whole thing. You can see both the arc of the flight through the jellyfish as well as the landing burn on the left side of the frame.
ILCE-9FE 14mm F1.8 GM lens14mmf/14.0503s100 ISO0.0 EV
