X-37B: Falcon Heavy

12/28/2023. SpaceX threw the X-37B into orbit this evening. The launch came a little too late to catch the Sun, but the trajectory was up the coast rather than out to sea, so it seemed worth having a look anyway. I only went as far as the cul de sac, to the high ground on the north side, where I set up the usual rocket-launch kit: 105mm Sigma, R6, sturdy tripod.

I kept SpaceFlightNow's live feed running on the iPhone to know when to look, and sure enough, about five minutes after lift-off, the second stage came into view over the pines. When I say "view," I mean in the electronic viewfinder of the R6 behind a very fast lens at very high ISO. I used 1/30 second exposures at ISO 51,200: the short exposure to reduce motion blur, the high ISO because I was sure I would stack several images to reduce noise. I ought to have set the camera for electronic shutter for its higher frame rate, but, well, details.

X-37B launches into the Moonlight
Canon 6D, 105mm Sigma, 24 frames, 1/30s @ F1.4, ISO 51,200 aligned on the rocket

SpaceX Falcon Heavy, second stage
Canon 6D, 105mm Sigma, 21 frames, 1/30s @ F1.4, ISO 51,200 aligned once
on the rocket, once on the stars, and then composited
Make it big!

I switched the camera to movie mode immediately after triggering this burst of stills. Here's the video, with the same exposure per frame:

In the original video, I could hear the SpaceFlightNow commentary running on my iPhone lying under the tripod, which tells me that the stills above were made just about 5m40s into flight and the video a few seconds later. I thought that I could read the speed and altitude from the archived stream of the launch later, but since the payload was classified, telemetry after staging was not made public. Just guessing, based on the last data shared and previous Falcon Heavy launches, I'd say that these photos and videos show the upper stage cruising along at about 14,500 km/sec and on the order of 130 km above the Atlantic.

1/04/2024. Nineteen Starlinks launched on December 29 swept out of Cygnus toward Andromeda across the starfields of Lacerta. They were predicted to be as bright as 2.3 but were about a magnitude fainter at the very end of twilight. And they were blue. This photo is a crop from a stack of about 40 frames (30s each, F2.8, ISO 1600, Canon R6 with Zeiss 25mm F2.0 Distagon, SWSA) processed to make the most of the lattice of trails. You're probably gonna have to click the image to see the satellites.

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