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Astrophotography Photography

Rocket Launch

This evening a Falcon 9 rocket was scheduled to launch from Vandenberg SFB, shortly after sunset. The timing was perfect for a big show if the launch actually happened. And it did! Mike Venard came out to watch the show with me and we were both quite impressed. One really has to see it to appreciate the spectacular view, but I took photos, of course, and so here some of them are. They don’t really do justice to what we saw though.

Here’s liftoff, at about 7:30 PM. The planet Mercury can be seen in the center of the image, on the left side is the radar station on Child’s Mountain. Taken with a 35mm Sigma lens. The rocket is about 600 miles west heading south over the Pacific Ocean.

The rocket rapidly speeds south leaving behind a wake of exhaust gases (mostly water that has frozen into ice crystals) that are lit up by the sun below the horizon. Perfect timing. The rocket has passed over Child’s Mountain and is heading south at probably around 5 miles per second. The booster can be seen falling away into the Pacific Ocean.
By now, the whole western sky is filled with this. The booster is streaking away toward the Pacific Ocean.
After the rocket was gone, these clouds remained for quite a while, basically man-made noctilucent clouds, very bright and colorful.
I quickly changed lenses to a 135mm for this shot, a close up of the exhaust cloud. What a show! This is the third time I’ve seen this happen, but this was the best one I’ve seen. I posted some photos on Spaceweather.com and see this morning that one is featured in on the main web page, it can be seen at this LINK.

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