NASA launched five rockets, each 80 seconds apart, into the skies over Virginia early on Tuesday. The rockets were on a mission to study the upper jetstream and released chemical tracers into the atmosphere to track how clouds move.
The resulting clouds soon dissipated but were visible to the sleepless onlookers — and their cameras — for a while. More than a few Flickr users in the area were up late last night and captured the unusual patterns in the sky on an otherwise cloud-free night.
The milky white clouds could be seen in places as far apart as Wilmington, N.C. and Buffalo, N.Y. Photographers, both amateurs and pros, snapped several pics of the clouds before they evaporated, with equipment that varied from high-end DSLRs to point-and-shoot cameras. Even NASA itself snapped a few shots.
In addition to some fantastic photography, the experiment will give NASA a better understanding of wind patterns 65 miles up, which in turn will let the space agency create better models of electromagnetic regions of space that can damage satellites or disrupt communication systems.
NASA launched the rockets from its facility on Wallops Island, VA. The space agency operates its atmospheric studies division out of Langley. The research group studies the Earth's atmosphere to better understand everything from climate to cloud physics. It also does some work in studying the atmospheres of other planets and moons in our solar system.
Did you take or spot any photos of the launch we missed? Let us know in the comments.