On January 6th, I stayed up late and drove to Cocoa Beach for the Space Coast's first rocket launch of the new decade! I planned to use the Cocoa Beach Pier as nice foreground for the shot, so I parked just south of the pier and walked along the beach to the north as I was adjusting to find the best viewing location. I was set up and ready to go with the shot framed about 10 min ahead of time while I was glued to the phone watching details of the launch from Space Flight Now's live feed. Unfortunately though, when the engines started to light and I turned on the shutter, I quickly noticed that I had missed the shot! As sometimes happens with rocket launches, the exact rocket angle trajectory is not always known to the general public ahead of time. The glow coming from the rocket was very much outside the frame. I quickly re-positioned the tripod in a split second and barely looked at the screen before backing up and turning the shutter on. Since I didn't get a good look at the screen I spent the next 260 seconds pretty much convinced I missed the shot. But it actually turned out better than I could have imagined. Much to my surprise, I not only got a great shot, but you can see the North Star, several Geostationary satellites, Cocoa Beach Pier, reflections in the ocean, and of course the entire assent of the rocket. I only saw the picture for a split second when I decided to turn the shutter on a second time just in case I could see any part of the booster landing at sea. Just I as I was pulling up the live stream to see if it had landed, I looked up to see an orange/red fire in the sky of the first deceleration burn. This is definitely one of my favorite pictures and a VERY pleasant surprise! I did stick around for a little bit after the launch was complete to take a few more pictures. Below is a close up of the Cocoa Beach Pier. For the Photography Nerds! The launch shot is a stacking of three separate photos done in Photoshop. All Three Photos are at ISO 100 taken on the Canon EOS-R with the RF 24-105 lens 1) 260 second shutter, f/16 - 1st and second stage burn 2) 197 second shutter, f/16 - Landing 3) 9.6 second shutter, f/4 - proper exposure of left side of pier In the third photo, everything but the very bright portion of the left pier was erased. This was done so that instead of a bright white blur, you can see the surf boards mounted to the walls, and even a TV by the bar. Full description of the mission from NASA:https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/01/spacex-kick-start-global-2020-starlink/:
The first rocket flight of the 2020s was conducted by SpaceX, using its Falcon 9 to deliver the newest batch of 60 operational Starlink satellites into orbit. The mission not only represents the start of a busy year for SpaceX but also for the Eastern Range in Florida, which expects 48 launches this year from the Florida Spaceport. Falcon 9 launched midway through a 20-minute window that extended from 21:09 to 21:29 EST (02:09 – 02:29 UTC on 7 January), with the preferred in-plane liftoff targeted for 21:19 EST (02:19 UTC).
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