A Russian rocket creates a strange and interesting pattern in the sky leading to an impressive photo.
Soon after launch on the morning of Tuesday 8 July, clear weather at the Russian space base in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, allowed photographer Anatoly Zak to capture the remarkable pattern on camera.
According to Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this is just one of many spectacular formations this kind of rocket can make as the core-stage rocket plume balloons out in the thin air high in the atmosphere. The cross at the top of the formation was made by the Soyuz’s four boosters.
Pretty cool. Wonder if this picture will surface with alternative “explanations”.
Rockets often make unusual trails in the sky and account for claims that something unknown is up there. It’s important to put these stories out to show that they have natural explanations and it’s hard to say something is “alien” or “mysterious” when there are so many things flying through our skies these days.
The “jellyfish” label is not to be confused with “jellyfish-like” UFOs (which can be weather balloons or some textile floating up there. Or, with skyfish – the “rods” phenomena which is a video artifact from insects flying by.