The effect of the “space jellyfish”: how it looks in the photo and when it appears

Residents of the East coast of the United States observed in the sky the effect of “space jellyfish” after the launch of the carrier rocket Falcon 9 SpaceX in Florida on the morning of October 13. Resembling the shape of a jellyfish trail occurs due to the illumination of the exhaust plume of the rocket against the background of sunset or dawn, explained in the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

In the account of the agency in the social network X created a thread in which users posted their footage of the “space jellyfish”. One of them managed to use a drone to capture the phenomenon in timelapse mode.

How and Why Space Jellyfish Appear

Leading researcher IKI RAS Nathan Eismont told RBC that the effect of “space jellyfish” is not considered unusual. Special physical or weather conditions for the appearance of this phenomenon is not necessary – it is enough that the Sun does not yet illuminate the surface of the Earth, but illuminates the condensation trail of the rocket in the atmosphere, said senior researcher at the Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Yevgeny Kravchenko.

During the launch, the spacecraft passes the stage separation. As a rule, "space jellyfish" appear at the time of working out the first stage, its separation and inclusion of the second, said RBC head of the astrophysical observatory of KubSU, head of the Center for Astronomy and Cosmonautics of the Krasnodar branch of the Russian Geographical Society Alexander Ivanov.

“[The phenomenon] can be observed at different altitudes, that is, closer to the cosmodrome – high, ... if we move away from the cosmodrome, then most likely it can be either on the horizon or close to the horizon.” The launch trajectory can play a huge role - you will see this jellyfish and the launch itself or not see it, Ivanov explained.

A similar phenomenon is observed in Russia. In April of this year, the light rays of the “space jellyfish” could be seen by residents of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region. Then “Fontanka” wrote that the source of the trail was the carrier rocket “Soyuz-2.1b”, launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome.