I went to Sandbridge Beach to watch the launch of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket carrying several satellites to low-Earth orbit. The rocket was launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, about 75 miles / 120 kilometers to the north.
Most of my shots were blurred garbage because I wasn't using the right lens (stoopid rookie mistake). But I got this 4 second shot of the Electron's second stage. It's about 3 1/2 minutes into the flight, the rocket is 80 miles / 130 kilometers up, and the fairings covering the satellites to protect them from the wind have been ejected since there's no atmosphere to speak of that altitude. The fairings are the two streaks below and to the left of the Electron and they are falling down into the Atlantic. The cloudy area is the exhaust plume caused by the first stage separation and second stage ignition.
