Month Top:

The base of Super Heavy emerges from alternating swaths of a dust plume.

Like the curtains of a concert hall both pulling away to reveal the performers, the exact same luckily happened here.

This shot was framed up on a tiny, fixed, postage-stamp-portion of the sky in Boca Chica at 800mm focal length.

As Starship lifted off, it captured the nosecone of Starship’s first motion. Moments later, dust covered the entire frame.

It wasn’t until this final few frames as the curtains of the dust cloud in the foreground pulled left and the same of the background pulled to the right, where the base of the rocket became visible.

The darkness of the background and the presence of the rocket’s plume in the sunlight highlighted the vibrant colors of the near-stoichiometrically operated Raptor engines. (almost perfect mixture ratios produces a purple-orange color. As you put 33 of these plumes together, no one had ever before seen what this amalgamation of colors would look like. It’s the privilege of my life to be able to capture memories and moments like this.

Month bottom:

Nothing too special here, except that this is our Moon.

Think for a moment about the placement of the Earth, Moon, and Sun in a straight line. You’re on Earth looking toward the bright Sun so it’s difficult to see the Moon. The Sun is still shining brightly on the whole of Earth’s surface though. After sundown in certain parts of the month, you can see the moon lit up in this brief sliver, but the Earth still shines on the Moon in full. Known as “earthshine” this is how you can see the “unlit” portion of the Moon during these few days per month.

Earthshine often has a blue tint to it as well, coming from Earth, where the sunlight is more neutral and relatively warm-hued.

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