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+--- Thread: Beautiful Sky Nebula (/thread-19787.html)
Beautiful Sky Nebula - Yazata - Feb 14, 2026
The occasion was the Crew 12 launch this morning before dawn eastern time, successfully carrying four astronauts to the space station. But the reason for this thread is that as the Crew 12 Falcon 9 staged, with the second stage powering on to orbit and the first stage returning to a successful landing at the new landing pad at SLC40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, it produced an extraordinarily beautiful sky display.
Here it is put to music by D. Wise of Nasaspaceflight.com (Watch on full screen with the sound on.)
https://x.com/dwisecinema/status/2022267244525375589
These sky shows occur when rockets launch before dawn or after sunset, when the Earth below is dark in Earth's shadow, but the rocket exhaust plume is still illuminated by the Sun far above. This one looks different than the more familiar "jellyfish" sometimes seen west of LA when rockets launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, because those rockets are moving perpendicular to the observers, while this one was moving both directly away (the second stage) and directly towards (the booster) observers at Cape Canaveral. So this was a straight-on view.