Which one of you shot off a large rocket today (5/19/22) near Houston?

Blatham489

Blatham489

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Flying across the north part of Houston today and saw this. I don’t see how it could be anything but a rocket. (The bright spot is the sun not the rocket’s red glare). This was just before 4:30 today, I was going east to west right about the southern portion of Lake Conroe, the smoke trail appeared to have come from the ground just east of Lake Conroe. The trail went straight up to I’d guess 15k MSL, just a guess, maybe higher. ATC knew nothing about it. Someone must know. Anyone here?
 

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That would have stumped me as well. I didn’t hear any chatter from the group around the airport (KIWS) as word usually travels fast.

very interesting and hope to hear more
 
Someone down on the ground was trying out the SA-2 battery they purchased on Facebook Marketplace. Good on you for jinking faster than it could respond, you live to fight another day.

:D
 
Not a contrail, the smoke was near vertical, the picture doesn’t show it well, it traced back down to the ground somewhere just east of the Lake Conroe dam.
 
Contrail It only looks like it's vertical.
 
Boeing did a launch out of Cape Canaveral yesterday. Probably not what you saw.
 
Blatham489 said:
Not a contrail, the smoke was near vertical, the picture doesn’t show it well, it traced back down to the ground somewhere just east of the Lake Conroe dam.
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I disagree, you're seeing the shadow, and it's clearly very high, and mostly parallel to the earth.
 
Just be glad it did not MIRV. That would have been a really bad day.
 
If it was vertical it would be shorter. I vote contrail. Many aircraft have been reported by observers to be diving toward the ground when approaching the horizon. It's an optical illusion due to lack of reference points in the sky and perspective convergence.

Much like attempting to estimate the size of something unfamiliar in the sky. Something small and close looks just like something large and far.
 
That's easy--High altitude narrow dispersion chemtrail!
 
It was a rocket plume, I have no doubt. You can disagree and vote however you want, but it wasn’t a contrail. I could see the trail down to maybe 1-2k ft above the surface. The pictures just don’t do it justice. And certainly there should have been a notam but ATC couldn’t find one.
 
Blatham489 said:
I don’t see how it could be anything but a rocket.
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The way it could be something other than a rocket is that it is not dense, and it is in a straight line. Rocket plumes are very dense compared to contrails (conservation of mass and all that), and rocket plumes quickly take on an irregular shape because winds vary as a function of altitude.

... based on 4 years living/working space launch at Cape Canaveral.
 
The 2nd and 3rd photos show the shadow diverging from the contrail, way out in the distance. I've seen this phenomenon - which is rare, but definitely happens, a number of times while doing aerial photography missions. The contrail is clearly level and out there, but you're seeing the shadow going all the way down to the ground - as it should.
 
RyanShort1 said:
The 2nd and 3rd photos show the shadow diverging from the contrail, way out in the distance. I've seen this phenomenon - which is rare, but definitely happens, a number of times while doing aerial photography missions. The contrail is clearly level and out there, but you're seeing the shadow going all the way down to the ground - as it should.
Click to expand...

I have to agree, I've seen similar phenomenon before. The shadow of the contrail at the right angle and lighting makes it look as if the contrail descends, but its an optical illusion.
 
Contrail or rocket launch.??

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Poor OP, has a rocket launch photo and everyone shoots it down

Maybe it was a meteor going down into Houston.
 
Zeldman said:
Contrail or rocket launch.??
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Hmm, that's a good one. Some contradictory clues. I'll go with rocket plume, but wouldn't be surprised to be wrong. Where was this?

Salty said:
Rockets don't generally go straight up
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True, but if you are observing from the plane of the trajectory, it will appear to be a straight line.
 
Contrail and its shadow.

A shadow is most visible in a special alignment: when your position, the sun, and the contrail are all on the same plane.

The OP’s photos show an example of that alignment.
 
TrueCourse said:
Poor OP, has a rocket launch photo and everyone shoots it down
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A few years ago I had a very similar experience to this. After studying the phenomenon for a period of time I correctly concluded what others here have concluded ... it was a contrail.

Don't mean to be a realist ... or a heartbreaker! o_O
 
donjohnston said:
Depending on where you are observing from, any rocket can appear to be going straight up.
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True. But what are the odds that you can take 4 pictures while traveling in an aircraft and happen to be heading exactly towards the rockets trajectory so that all the pics have it still in a straight line?
 
Here's an example of a contrail shadow, which was visible in the air. I was coplanar with the sun and one particular contrail. The shadow does kinda look like smoke.

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Salty said:
True. But what are the odds that you can take 4 pictures while traveling in an aircraft and happen to be heading exactly towards the rockets trajectory so that all the pics have it still in a straight line?
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I was responding to your post that referenced a single picture.
 
One would think a rocket launch near Houston would have made the news since Boca Chica is, well, nowhere near there. And that’s closer than Corn Ranch.
 
I can't say with the certainty of many...but I will say this

I live in NE FL and we can see the rocket trails on clear days. Especially here but other places too, I have seen contrails that I would swear were rockets. Sometimes even while the jet was still at the tip of it so I could see the motion. I was convinced so much so that I've looked up the nasa web site and searched for TFR's to see what it is...and have looked at studied some of these things for a long time before i realized that they were in fact contrails. and I'm one that usually can see through most of those optical illusion pictures.If my memory serves correctly, I want to say that the times I was most convinced were when driving...maybe something about not being able to focus totally on the UFO....
 
Blatham489 said:
It was a rocket plume, I have no doubt. You can disagree and vote however you want, but it wasn’t a contrail. I could see the trail down to maybe 1-2k ft above the surface. The pictures just don’t do it justice. And certainly there should have been a notam but ATC couldn’t find one.
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Referencing my earlier post: How do you know it was "down to maybe 1-2k ft", when you do not know your distance from the phenomenon?
 
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