SpaceX CRS-35 this morning. Falcon 9 out of Cape Canaveral, 6:33am. Shot from Tampa, 140 miles from the pad, in twilight. The elusive space jellyfish. When the rocket is already up in sunlight while the ground is still dark. In this case a Falcon 9 First stage boosts back toward LZ-40 and the Second stage keeps climbing toward the ISS. Both burns dump vapor and exhaust into really thin air, it freezes and spreads, and the rising sun lights that cloud from below. You’re standing in shadow looking at something that’s already in sunrise. Scientific Magic. That’s why you get the blue bell and the gold and red tentacles, rising into sunrise. Same idea as noctilucent clouds too… ice crystals form high enough to catch the sun at night except these aren’t the polar night-shining clouds though. This is rocket exhaust in the upper atmosphere. What is amazing is that it can hang there for a while and look completely wrong, like something that doesn’t belong. People who don’t know think it’s an alien invasion but it’s just a Falcon 9 launching and landing. Besides the rocket nebula shots, these orbital sunrise frames are the ones I chase the most. If you’re going to shoot a dawn launch from Florida, get somewhere with a clean eastern sky and expose for the plume, not the rocket. The sky around you is still night. The show is sunrise in space. Photo Credit: me