AlphaPhoenix
Artificial Nebula
My first photograph featured on APOD!!!
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181012.html
Prints and stuff available on RedBubble
redbubble.com/people/brianhaidet/works/34407841-artificia...
When I heard there was going to be a rocket landing attempt in Vandenberg I got really excited, because I've watched a handful of SpaceX launch streams and I'm still in awe of the technological issues overcame to get to this point. I'd only seen a couple rocket launches in person, and the closest I'd ever been was an Atlas IV (I think?) launch at Canaveral but I was probably 8ish years old, so I don't remember it too well. More recently I've seen a couple ULA launches out of Vandenberg, but only from Goleta, many miles from the base. For this launch, we took two cars full of grad students on the hour-long drive up to Vandenberg and got as close as we could to the launch, joining the massive line of cars on Ocean Avenue before the road was closed closer to the beach. It reminded me of solar eclipse traffic last year - massive turnout for a cool scientific event!
Although I was scrambling to change lenses two minutes before the launch due to the rapidly changing lighting conditions, I ended up what I thought was "stuck" with only my telephoto attached, meaning that when this beautiful plume showed up, I could only take pictures of it way zoomed in. I wasn't about to look away from the incredible sights long enough to install a wide angle and find a lens cap! As it turns out, this 88 mm equivalent field of view shows some awesome detail, both in the clouds generated by the exhaust, and in the pulses of the gas thrusters on the Falcon first stage!
This picture was taken during the Falcon 9 stage-separation, where the first stage comes back to land and the second stage accelerates into orbit carrying a lot less mass. This picture was taken from about three miles north of the launch site, so with the rocket headed roughly south, multiple aspects of the flight could be captured at once. The red smoke to the right is from the initial ascent, lit by twilight only, and is only a few miles away. The large plume of blue and orange is the result of stage separation and the first stage's "boostback" burn well downrange of the pad. This event occurred at a much higher altitude, and was actually sunlit, despite it being nighttime on the ground. The upside-down "V" of jets at the top of the image is a series of short correction pulses from the first stage's cold gas thrusters orienting the stage for the return to the pad. The bright spot in the lower part of the image is the second stage accelerating to orbital velocity, now very far downrange and headed directly away from the camera.
As we watched this unfold, I heard an elementary-aged student standing at a nearby car say "Wow, it looks like a planetary nebula!" Aside from being a heartwarming reminder of the inspirational power of spaceflight, he was very literally close to the truth. Nebulas are just clouds of gas and dust expanding in near-vacuum and lit by a nearby star. If you bend the definition a bit, that's exactly what we saw above southern California this weekend! It makes sense that we see the same filamentary structures - it's just that the gas and dust in this case were the result of burning kerosene instead of the leftovers from star formation...
Artificial Nebula
My first photograph featured on APOD!!!
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181012.html
Prints and stuff available on RedBubble
redbubble.com/people/brianhaidet/works/34407841-artificia...
When I heard there was going to be a rocket landing attempt in Vandenberg I got really excited, because I've watched a handful of SpaceX launch streams and I'm still in awe of the technological issues overcame to get to this point. I'd only seen a couple rocket launches in person, and the closest I'd ever been was an Atlas IV (I think?) launch at Canaveral but I was probably 8ish years old, so I don't remember it too well. More recently I've seen a couple ULA launches out of Vandenberg, but only from Goleta, many miles from the base. For this launch, we took two cars full of grad students on the hour-long drive up to Vandenberg and got as close as we could to the launch, joining the massive line of cars on Ocean Avenue before the road was closed closer to the beach. It reminded me of solar eclipse traffic last year - massive turnout for a cool scientific event!
Although I was scrambling to change lenses two minutes before the launch due to the rapidly changing lighting conditions, I ended up what I thought was "stuck" with only my telephoto attached, meaning that when this beautiful plume showed up, I could only take pictures of it way zoomed in. I wasn't about to look away from the incredible sights long enough to install a wide angle and find a lens cap! As it turns out, this 88 mm equivalent field of view shows some awesome detail, both in the clouds generated by the exhaust, and in the pulses of the gas thrusters on the Falcon first stage!
This picture was taken during the Falcon 9 stage-separation, where the first stage comes back to land and the second stage accelerates into orbit carrying a lot less mass. This picture was taken from about three miles north of the launch site, so with the rocket headed roughly south, multiple aspects of the flight could be captured at once. The red smoke to the right is from the initial ascent, lit by twilight only, and is only a few miles away. The large plume of blue and orange is the result of stage separation and the first stage's "boostback" burn well downrange of the pad. This event occurred at a much higher altitude, and was actually sunlit, despite it being nighttime on the ground. The upside-down "V" of jets at the top of the image is a series of short correction pulses from the first stage's cold gas thrusters orienting the stage for the return to the pad. The bright spot in the lower part of the image is the second stage accelerating to orbital velocity, now very far downrange and headed directly away from the camera.
As we watched this unfold, I heard an elementary-aged student standing at a nearby car say "Wow, it looks like a planetary nebula!" Aside from being a heartwarming reminder of the inspirational power of spaceflight, he was very literally close to the truth. Nebulas are just clouds of gas and dust expanding in near-vacuum and lit by a nearby star. If you bend the definition a bit, that's exactly what we saw above southern California this weekend! It makes sense that we see the same filamentary structures - it's just that the gas and dust in this case were the result of burning kerosene instead of the leftovers from star formation...