On Florida’s Space Coast, we like to say rockets get out of here in a hurry. This GoPro “nightlapse” timelapse makes the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 with Starlink satellites on April 28, 2021, appear to be REALLY fast. In retrospect, it would’ve been nice if the trees weren’t in the way, but the challenge of launch photography is knowing where the rocket is going to come up, especially if you’re shooting from a new location. Yes, you can sort of figure it out, but it’s still possible to be just a little bit off.
It was a really windy night, so the palm trees were blurred in my photos. The moon was just beyond full, so it showed up nicely in the fisheye photo.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 launches from Cape Canaveral with Starlink communications satellites on April 28, 2021. Photo by Chris Kridler, ChrisKridler.com
In this picture, I played around with stacking just a few photos. That’s the streak shot here with the nice blue background and really short star trails.
A fisheye lens shot of the SpaceX launch as seen along the Indian River Lagoon.
Here’s the photo I shot with my 10.5mm fisheye lens. This is one long exposure – 257 seconds – featuring the launch on one side and the moon on the other. I cropped it a little to get the strong horizontal shape.