7.04.2024
New images show a glowing "dashed" line in the night sky above Arizona after part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fell back to Earth following a double-header launch.
Photographer Jeremy Perez captured striking photos of a perfectly-spaced dashed line of light in the night sky above Arizona following a SpaceX launch on March 31. (Image credit: perezmedia.net)
Striking new photos show a perfect dashed line of light left behind by a dying SpaceX rocket in the night sky above Arizona. The luminous streak, which is the result of some clever photo trickery, is the latest reminder of the company's rapidly increasing launch schedule.
On Saturday (March 30th), SpaceX launched two of their Falcon 9 rockets in less than four hours, Space.com reported. The first rocket, which was carrying the Eutelsat 36D telecommunications satellite, took off at 5:52 p.m. EDT from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The second rocket, which was carrying 23 of the company's Starlink satellites, launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Center, located next door to KSC, at 9:30 p.m. EDT.
After deploying their payloads, the rockets' second stages — the main part of the rocket that separates from the rocket's reusable boosters — underwent controlled deorbit burns, which caused them to fall toward Earth and burn up in the planet's upper atmosphere.
Photographer Jeremy Perez had initially planned to capture the deorbit burn of the first rocket from near his home in Flagstaff, AZ but was left empty-handed due to thick cloud coverage. But by the time the second rocket began the same maneuver, the skies had cleared and Perez was able to catch some stunning images of the deorbiting debris, Spaceweather.com reported.
In the new images, Perez combined multiple long-exposure shots of the ignited second stage as it passed overhead. The breaks in the luminous streak represent points where the camera's shutter was closed.
Zoomed in photos of the light show show a second fainter line parallel to the first. (Image credit: perezmedia.net
In real-time the event appeared very differently: "It looked like a delicate, cometary dandelion poof drifting overhead," Perez told Spaceweather.com. The light also appeared white in real-time instead of the bright blues seen in the photos, he added.
In zoomed-in versions of the photos, you can also see a second dimmer line alongside the falling space junk. This streak is made up of light from the satellites deployed by the rocket, which were drifting alongside it before it started its final maneuver.
Quelle: SC