Time for your daily dose of space porn! Photographer Zack Grether posted photos on his blog of what he said was the landing of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Image: Zach Grether
Grether said he captured the moment on Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina back in May while taking photos of the Milky Way. He said he set his camera, a Sony a7R II mirrorless camera, down at around 1:10am to take 30 frames over five minutes.
“As the camera slowly ticked down to its final few frames, I saw out of the corner of my eye what looked like a firework going off in the distance,” he wrote. “It was very reminiscent of a satellite in orbit so I got to thinking that maybe, just maybe, it was some sort of rocket launch.”
While astute Reddit user __Rocket__ pointed out that it probably wasn’t the rocket landing — most likely a re-entry burn — it’s still fascinating to see photographers work to capture the night sky. Grether said he captures a series of images of a moment and then stacks them in Photoshop.
If you want to learn more about how Grether did it, you can read about his technique over on his blog.