Finally, a well-timed launch!

2026/03/04. Charlotte meteorologist Brad Panovich posted a note about an early morning SpaceX launch (including the map below which I editted to indicate when and from where these photos were made). I'd completely overlooked this one until I saw Brad's post the night before. I set an alarm and headed for the community lot ahead of the 5:58AM liftoff. Launch was 54 minutes ahead of sunrise here, just about right for a decent jellyfish. Clouds and fog dimmed the show (or added character -- you pick). I used a 105mm Sigma F1.4, R6, a remote release, ISO 6400 and electronic shutter mode to make brief stackable bursts.

All exposures were 1/25s at F1.4 and ISO 6400. The first image is a single frame; the rest are are stacks of a few (~6-10) or several (40) frames, aligned on the rocket with the foreground preserved from one frame in the series. Some are separately processed luminance plus color data. Which is to say that I treated the rocket like a comet. This sequence spans 82 seconds at the end of powered flight during which I captured 198 frames.

Here's a jellyfish predictor in beta testing from John Krauss Photos. Looks promising. (https://jellyfish.johnkrausphotos.com/)

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