Early this morning, SpaceX and NASA launched four astronauts into space. The launch was originally scheduled for yesterday morning. We were looking forward to watching the launch get lit by the rising sun. When they delayed the launch by one day, they also changed the launch time to 20 minutes earlier. This concerned me because I knew it would be too early to be lit as I’d hoped.
I was awake about 40 minutes before the launch. I debated whether to bother taking a picture of the launch. I decided to go ahead and do it, so I gathered my tripod, camera, shutter release, and lenses. I assembled everything in the living room while I watched the live broadcast.
At L-5 minutes, I went outside and located a spot in the southeast corner of my yard. Andrew helped me line up the shot. It was still very dark out and I couldn’t see a thing. With my phone light, I verified that the camera was level.
When the countdown hit 0 at 5:49 am, the sky was illuminated by the nine Merlin engines coming to life. The first minute or two of the launch was pretty typical of all night launches. As the rocket left the atmosphere, the flames started to spread and burn with different colors. It was beautiful, as always.
But then it all changed. After the second stage separated from the booster and lit its rocket, the vapor cloud became quite visible and grew to fill nearly a quarter of the sky. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It started small, then the “jellyfish” just kept growing larger and larger. While this was going on, pulses from the nitrogen thrusters on both the first and second stages caused shock waves that raced through the growing cloud. It was truly the most incredible launch I’ve ever witnessed.
| Launch as seen from my back yard |
| Vapor clouds; by Andrew |
| Vapor clouds; by Andrew |
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment