Apparently, I live in a Starship flight path. During spring, my son and I saw a half doz launch artifacts during our nightly walks. There were long trails and a sort of slow-forming starburst that persisted for a minute or so.
Polizeiposaune•4mo ago
Starship has only launched four times this year (January 16, March 6, May 27, and August 26) at around 23:00 UTC (5pm CST/6pm CDT) each time.
It is likely that you saw other rockets (Falcon 9 being the most frequently launched). The "slow-forming starburst" is most likely from the exhaust plume in vacuum; once the rocket is high enough to no longer be in earth's shadow the plume catches sunlight and becomes very visible on the ground to an observer in darkness. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_jellyfish
WarOnPrivacy•4mo ago
You are correct. One was the Fram2, Falcon 9 launch.
It also dodges most uf USA. I'm surprised it covers a lot of northern Mexico. My city is in the path, and I don't live in the border.
On one hand, it will be cool to look for starships in the sky; on the other, I don't want the risk of crashing starships in my city, at least not after seeing how biased against Mexican territory the path is.
WarOnPrivacy•4mo ago
Polizeiposaune•4mo ago
It is likely that you saw other rockets (Falcon 9 being the most frequently launched). The "slow-forming starburst" is most likely from the exhaust plume in vacuum; once the rocket is high enough to no longer be in earth's shadow the plume catches sunlight and becomes very visible on the ground to an observer in darkness. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_jellyfish
WarOnPrivacy•4mo ago
ref: https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/03/31/live-coverage-spacex-t...