Space Jellyfish

This is super cool!

I posted this rather quickly on launch day and didn't add much commentary to it.

During the day you often see a fire trail behind a rocket and most of that fire turns into lingering "white smoke" behind the rocket. Great to see, but they all are pretty similar.

During night launches you see the fire and that is pretty much it. Great to see, especially if you are close enough to have the area around you lit up, but they are all pretty much the same (visually, add in sound and vibration and you have the full experience).

Launches in the time range from about 15-60 minutes before dawn or 15-60 minutes after sunset are all unique. In this time window the viewer is in darkness, the sky seems to be dark, but the rocket is passing through sunlight. Rather than seeing just the white trail (daytime) or nothing (nighttime), you see much more of the exhaust gases and vapors left behind as the rocket passes. There will be changes in the size (expansion) due to engines changing power level, but there will also be changes due to the different layers of the atmosphere. During daytime launches the variations caused by winds being at different speeds in different atmospheric layers is typically limited, during pre/post dawn/dusk launches the exhaust can often be seen wandering around much more dynamically. Sometimes during pre/post dawn/dusk launches the viewer is in darkness, but the rocket is rising through what is effectively sunrise/sunset. The rocket trail will be various shades of white, yellow, orange, red and dark blue all at the same time. Interesting to watch, always different.

The jellyfish is one of the less dramatic examples of this. If you have never seen a launch then your reaction might be "fire went up and there was smoke, big deal". But, if you have seen a few launches you would know that seeing this level of expansion, seeing it somewhat symmetrical and seeing the extra smoke ring off to the left are all parts of something unique to this launch and only visible during narrow time windows.