Photos by Brooke Knighton.
On the night of Monday February 10, a trailing cloud formation was brightly visible in the sky as the afternoon transitioned into the evening. The strange phenomenon was the signature exhaust plume of a SpaceX Falcon rocket, which was launched at around twilight on Monday evening from Vandenberg Space Base in California. The launch aimed to deploy a train of 23 SpaceX Starlink satellites - the unique combination of air pressure changes and the evening twilight illuminating the launch at just the right angle produced a phenomenon affectionately known as a “space jellyfish” in the sky, illuminating the fuel plume and making it visible across a wide portion of the southwestern United States.
