I chose this location because I recently realized that this dock is almost exactly due west from the launch pad, so I thought looking straight down the dock towards the pad would look cool. Also, with the trajectory being almost due east, the trail would stay in the center. Because, you know, symmetry. Turns out, it was so close the being perfectly up and away from me that it basically made a short straight line. I honestly didn’t expect it to be that close to perfect! The star trails were taken in the time leading up to the launch after the clouds cleared out, then blended together in post, of course.
Falcon 9 lifts off on a chilly Florida evening carrying 60 Starlink satellites to low earth orbit. This marks the fourth mission for this particular booster (B1049).
Shortly after midnight on 8/7/18, the SpaceX Falcon 9 roared into the night, carrying Indonesia's Merah Putih communication satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. This photo consists of hundreds of captures. I started around 9:30pm, capturing repeated 30-second exposures of the stars for the ~3 hours leading up to launch. Then, in two 2.5- and 3.5-minute exposures, captured the first stage and second stage flight, respectively.
