Add The California Post on Google There’s yet another reason for Californians to keep an eye on the night sky this week.
In addition to the annual Perseid meteor shower, a manmade space phenomenon is set to light up our nights.
Experts say there’s a strong likelihood of spotting a “space jellyfish,” a surreal vision that occurs when sunlight reflects off of the exhaust plumes of a recently launched rocket during evening twilight or early morning.
As the rocket makes its ascent into the upper atmosphere, the exhaust is illuminated while decreasing temperatures turn water vapor into ice crystals that trail behind the rocket.
The effect creates the appearance of an otherworldly, jellyfish-like shape for those watching from the relative darkness of Earth.
The nature of these plumes varies from colorful to white, depending on the timing of the launch. Morning typically produces white jellies, while twilight launches can create a more rainbow or iridescent quality.
These sky shapes typically appear after a SpaceX rocket launch, specifically, a Falcon 9 rocket launched at either of the two SpaceX facilities in Florida or the SoCal base.
Space Jellyfish Alerts, a website that estimates the likelihood that a rocket launch will produce a jellie, has shared that tonight’s Starlink launch could indeed give rise to the phenomenon.
Starlink 17-49 will launch tonight at 8:00 PM PDT and enter sunlight approximately 40 seconds after takeoff.
Detailed predictions based on location can be found here.
Space Jellyfish Alerts notes that local sky brightness could interfere with visibility.
Owned by Elon Musk, SpaceX, which has made its polarizing founder the world’s first trillionaire, harbors grand ambitions like building data centers in space and colonizing Mars
The jellyfish bloom comes in the wake of a newsworthy week for SpaceX.
On Tuesday, SpaceX showed its first report card since its blockbuster market debut in June – notching a 92% surge in revenue despite losing $541 million in the second quarter.
On Wednesday, it was reported that a piece of a SpaceX rocket smashed into the moon at high speed.
Also on Wednesday, SpaceX shares tanked nearly 14% after it revealed a massive jump in spending on AI investments.
On Thursday, Musk announced plans to build Terafab “the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.”
A jointly built Tesla and SpaceX semiconductor megafactory, Terafab will rise in Grimes County, Texas, just outside Houston, with a first phase price tag of $16.8 billion.
“It will be stunningly beautiful,” Musk wrote on X. “Sci-fi city is what we’re aiming for,” he said in another X post.
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