Okay, it started days ago, but we’re now less than seven days out from the eclipse and las than thirty-six hours from when I’m supposed to hit the road, so I guess it’s more accurate to say, “The panic is on!”
Which is not to say that a few minutes couldn’t be spared to watch tonight’s sunset launch out of Vandenberg of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Look closely and you can see a bright dot that’s Jupiter, just to the left of the palm tree tops. This exhaust plume was drifting in the high altitude, sunset skies as I was waiting to hear the sonic boom about nine minutes after launch, a couple minutes after the second stage had disappeared over the southern horizon. That sonic boom was very noticeable – not like it was going to shatter windows, but it was a pretty good “thump.”
You might be able to hear it just a few seconds before the end of this video, just before I said, “There it is!”
Take a moon a quarter the size of it’s primary planet, put it out a quarter million miles, let angular momentum and four and a half billion years roll by, and it ends up right there tonight, headed for right THERE in twelve days and thirteen hours. Mix in an atmosphere, some haze and fog, diffraction, refraction, Reyleigh scattering, and you end up with a weird looking arc of bright orange peeking over the horizon.
Whip out that cell phone, hold really, REALLY still, and maybe you see this.
When a rocket launches it leaves behind it a trail of exhaust. From the rocket itself there’s a V-shaped plume of exhaust that grows bigger and wider as the rocket ascends and the air pressure drops. This can sometimes be tough to see during daylight unless you’re close to the launch site. At night it’s much easier to see the rocket and V-shaped plume since the rocket is so bright, but you often can’t see the long plume behind it because there’s nothing illuminating it.
But there’s a sweet spot, for a little while after sunset (or before sunrise, but getting up that early? who needs that sort of negativity in their lives?!) when it’s dark enough overhead to see the rocket, but the Sun’s still shining over the horizon to illuminate the plume…
I didn’t figure it would matter at all. We again had several pop-up thunderstorms that weren’t in the forecast at all (what IS up with that?) and late this afternoon we were getting light showers and we weren’t watching anything in the sky except the bottoms of some thick, black clouds.
But I checked again just before the SpaceX launch, and it was surprisingly clear. I kicked the “LIVE!” button in Facebook.
It was AMAZING!!
The plume had gone from horizon to (almost) horizon (there’s a tree there to the southeast) and the lighting and timing were perfect.
In the video you can see the first stage come up from behind the mountains (0:56), shut down and separate from the upper stage (1:42), the second stage light (1:49), the first stage falling behind with occasional white flashes from the cold nitrogen gas thrusters it uses for maneurvering (2:37 & 2:39), and the two fairing halves separating and falling away (2:46). If you listen carefully (or are using headphones) you can hear neighbors from a couple of spots through the neighborhood hooting & hollering.
Even fifteen minutes after the launch, the plume was still illuminated as the upper level winds twisted and dissapated the exahust, still lit from the Sun far over the western horizon.
Online on social media you’ll see videos and pictures from all up and down the California coast, from Pismo Beach to San Diego, down into Baja, and inland in as far as Palm Springs, Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas. There’s even one picture from a guy somewhere over the Rockies at 34,000 feet, hundreds and hundreds of miles away.
1) Be careful to watch the partial phases of the eclipse carefully and protect your eyes!
2) If you don’t already have safe eclipse glasses and you’re going to watch the eclipse, get them now! They’ll sell out quickly.
Never look at the Sun without protection except for when it’s 100% fully eclipsed. For those 4:24 you’re going to see one of the most amazing sights in the entire Universe and you can whip those glasses off and see it in all of its naked eye glory. But for the partial phases for a couple hours before totality and for a couple of hours after totality, you MUST have protection for your eyes.
And NEVER look at the uneclipsed Sun with binoculars or any kind of magnification without special solar filters designed specifically for that instrument. You can cause permanent vision damage or loss in just seconds.
When shopping for eclipse glasses, make sure you only buy from reputable sources and manufacturers. There are reports already of many sellers on Amazon and elsewhere that are are pushing knock off glasses that don’t meet the proper standards for protecting your vision. I got mine from 2024eclipse.org. (For a package of ten I paid $27, including tax and shipping, so that should give you a good baseline for how much you should be paying.)
At the end of the day, if you can’t get certified eclipse glasses and April 8th comes and you still need a way to look at the partial phases of the eclipse, there are other options that don’t involve looking directly at the Sun. We’ll get to those another time.
Oh, look what popped up in the sunset skies, two days past new moon!
Just a thumbnail, hanging up there with the lit sliver pointing the way toward the Sun.
After it got a little bit darker, Jupiter’s bright off to the left. There’s a new comet that might be visible after dark over to the right, about where the top of that tall tree is. But you’ll need a dark sky to see it, and binoculars will help.
I went out before it all set, had my good binoculars, but struck out on the comet. I found the guide stars that the finder chart used to point out its location and it should have been right there – but I couldn’t see a thing. The surface brightness of the comet is probably much lower than the background illumination of all of LA’s light pollution combined with Ventura County’s coastal haze.
But in twenty-six days? By that time, assuming the comet hasn’t faded out of sight, it will have moved over to the other side of Jupiter and during that 4:24 of eclipse, it should be clearly visible, along with Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, and the eclipsed Sun. Will I actually be able to see it?
In 26 days, 9 hours, and 13 minutes we’ll find out!
I’m going to have to start putting the date into the titles on these posts. What used to be a “once or twice a year” and then became “once every couple of months” is now a “once a week or so” cadence and that’s expected to nearly double again in 2025.
The Falcon9 has just gone supersonic and through MaxQ (the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure) when it climbs over the hill from my viewpoint, 115 miles to the southeast of the launch site.
As it climbs and the air pressure drops off, the exhaust trail lengthens.
As the atmosphere gets even more thin and the plume gets longer and cooler through expansion, the colors start to change.
Just before the nine first stage main engines cut off and the first stage drops away (to land on a ship off of Baja California) the plume is a rainbow of color.
MECO! Main Engine Cut Off.
The second stage engine lights and the top part of the rocket starts accelerating toward 17,000 mph. From this far away for a night launch, the naked eye can see an orange dot moving along quickly. Binoculars or a telephoto lens will clearly show the second stage exhaust plume, a V-shaped cone stretching out behind the vehicle. Here you can see it (click on the image to see it full sized!) traveling just below the bright star Sirius.
Again, click on the image to see it full sized – the second state is passing Sirius.
And leaving Sirius behind, headed down toward the southern horizon where I lose it behind the Santa Monica Mountains.
I really need a somewhat bigger lens (this is a 70-300mm zoom, I would love to have a 600mm telephoto) and a better tripod. The good news is that with weekly launches and the cadence speeding up even more, there should be lots of opportunities for practice!
Kerrville is expecting somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 visitors for the day of the eclipse. It’s going to be a madhouse.
To get a room there a four-day minimum was required, non-refundable, and at somewhere between three and five times the normal hotel rates. Ye olde “supply & demand” at work!
I’ll be driving out from Los Angeles, about twenty hours of driving, but over three days. That should give me sufficient slack to allow for any unexpected issues or detours.
I didn’t even think about flying out and getting a rental car – those reservations were pretty much booked and overbooked months ago.
In order to take that time off of work I’m going like a banshee now to try to not only keep up with my current workload but to get ahead and stay ahead for when I leave. (No good deed…)
So, a marathon, to have my butt and hopefully a trunk full of camera gear in a sunny spot in central Texas in the early afternoon twenty-seven days from now.
See that Sun? We’re only one day away from the new moon, so somewhere in this view is also that Moon, even if you can’t see it. (It’s probably about where the tops of those palm trees are, about 15º-ish west of the sun.)
You can’t see the Moon because it’s being seriously backlit by a freakin’ bright star, but it’s still there, creeping in its orbit closer and closer to an alignment which is perfect… But this month, they’ll miss. No part of the Sun will be blocked by the Moon from our viewpoint, and conversely, no part of the Moon’s shadow will touch the Earth.
Next month, on the other hand…
In 28 days, on April 8th, the alignment will be absolutely perfect and the shadow of the moon will swing in an arc from the Pacific Ocean toward the northeast across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, before heading out over the Canadian maritime provinces.
Yes, I’ll be there. With my son living in San Antonio, I’ll be headed to Kerrville, TX as my base, sitting right on the centerline of the path of totality with 4:24 of totality.
Yes, you’ll be hearing about it here. Probably just about every day once we get into April.
If anyone has questions, feel free to drop them into the comments. I’ll try to answer them all.
Another batch of Starlink satellites headed uphill. A little too far after sunset for the big “space jellyfish aurora” effect, but that long trail of fire makes it easy to follow.
I’m working on getting better pictures from here. Having a launch every week or so is going to make that easier than having a launch every couple of months.
‘Twas a pretty, pretty sight. And again, about twelve minutes after launch, long after I had finished taking picutres and was back in the house, there was that soft “thwump!” that shook a window or two. The launch sonic boom!
Remember when I went to the NASA Social at Palmdale and got to see the SOFIA aircraft?
This was in 2015, nine years ago, and they’ve unfortunately retired her now. But that big door in side, just forward of the tail, would open up inside to expose a huge infrared telescope.
Inside, folks would attach their equipment and experiments (like this one from a group at Cornell Universaity) and the mirror and experiments would seemingly bounce and dance around as the plane flew above a big chunk of the atmosphere. But in fact the telescope tracking systems were keeping the telescope perfectly still with astonishing precision, while the plane bounced and moved around it.
(Map from 
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 