Watch: SpaceX rocket creates dazzling ‘jellyfish’ cloud over East Coast
A glowing rocket plume resembling a jellyfish surprised early risers.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 was spotted leaving behind a “jellyfish cloud” over Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 25. The rocket launched before sunrise from Florida carrying 29 Starlink satellites.
A jellyfish cloud produced by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crossing the sky offered a stunning surprise for skywatchers early Tuesday morning.
The launch occurred at 5:33 a.m. ET, when Falcon 9 launched 29 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, according to SpaceX. The event marked the 37th flight for the first stage of the mission.
“It was spectacular,” Hugh E. Dillon, who captured footage of the shuttle crossing the Philadelphia skyline, told Storyful. “The best rocket launch I have ever seen.”
A SpaceX Falcon 9 on mission Starlink Group 10-49 launched from Cape Canaveral creates "jellyfish" cloud effect as it passes above New York City on Aug. 25, 2026, in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)
The breathtaking visual was also seen in other parts of the East Coast, including New York, Georgia and Washington, D.C. As the rocket crossed the sky, the first stage booster separated and landed in the Atlantic Ocean.
The “jellyfish” cloud effect is produced when sunlight strikes the rocket’s exhaust plume in the pre-dawn sky. The illuminated gases then expand outward, creating what looks like jellyfish tentacles floating across the sky.
Jellyfish clouds created by rockets such as the Falcon 9 are examples of human-made noctilucent clouds, which consist of ice crystals formed high in the atmosphere. Also known as polar mesospheric clouds, these wispy formations are illuminated by sunlight that still reaches them at their high altitudes after the sun has set for viewers on the ground, NASA explains.
Footage of the “jellyfish” cloud shows the phenomenal sight early risers were able to witness on Tuesday.
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