{"id":656915,"date":"2026-05-21T18:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T18:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/656915\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T18:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T18:19:10","slug":"what-is-a-space-jellyfish-and-how-does-it-form-in-the-sky-after-rocket-launch-wsb-tv-channel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/656915\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a \u2018space jellyfish\u2019 and how does it form in the sky after rocket launch? \u2013 WSB-TV Channel 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The northeast sky put on a show for some us Thursday morning after SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket launched in central Florida.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">If the sky was clear enough, you may have spotted a phenomenon known as a \u201cspace jellyfish\u201d or \u201cjellyfish cloud\u201d from the rocket\u2019s exhaust. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">But how does it form?<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">[DOWNLOAD: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsbtv.com\/smart-tv\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Severe Weather Team 2 Chief Meteorologist Brad Nitz says after the launch, the rocket\u2019s exhaust rapidly expands in the very thin upper atmosphere. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">As it lifts into the rising sunlight at higher altitude, Nitz says the exhaust illuminates creating the jellyfish shape effect. It only happens for launches just before sunrise or just after sunset. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Thursday\u2019s launch happened after 6:04 a.m. and the \u201cspace jellyfish\u201d was visible in parts of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Have any photos or videos of the Falcon 9 launch? Email us at newstip@wsbtv.com<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">TRENDING STORIES:<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">[SIGN UP: <a href=\"https:\/\/membercenter.wsbtv.com\/newsletters\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph body-copyright\">\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The northeast sky put on a show for some us Thursday morning after SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket launched&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-656915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}