Month Top:

Thunderbirds!

Captured from the roof of a nearby parking garage at Daytona Beach Int’l Airport during a practice run for the airshow in the following days at the 2023 Daytona 500, here’s TB #4 Lauren Schlichting departing on the easterly runway.

If you look in the air intake under the nose of the plane, it’s moving so quickly and the air rushing into the intake so quickly some condensation is forming.

Also visible shooting out the back of the Pratt & Whitney F-100-PW-200 turbofan engine is the incredible heat distortion, as 23,000 lbs of thrust propel the F-16 fighter jet forward.

Month bottom:

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 ignites a single center Merlin 1D engine as it returns to land in March 2023, as photographed from nearby SLC-34 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The green portion of the plume at the bottom is a byproduct of the ignition liquids used to start the Merlin engine. Known as TEA TEB (triethylaluminum triethylborane) is a pyrophoric liquid, meaning it combusts spontaneously upon contact with the atmosphere. SpaceX spews out a small amount of this liquid into the combustion chamber of the Merlin engine as the fuel (RP1) and oxidizer (liquid oxygen — OX) also begin to mix in the chamber.

All of this happens quickly, TEA TEB ignites them and off they go the engine is running. (massive simplification, of course 🤣)

But this is the reason for the bright green flash you see.

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