Photographing the NASA InSight Launch
Last weekend, I had the awesome pleasure of photographing my first rocket launch. I heard about the NASA InSight mission, which is a new Mars rover that will be studying the Martian core, was launching out of Vandenberg Air Force Base. This was the first inter-planetary mission of it's kind, so I wanted to photograph it, as I wanted to record some astronomy history.
The launch was taking place on May 5th at 04:05, so I knew I had to get to location early to get my shot composed, test shots, and be ready in time for the launch. So I decided just to not go to sleep that night, since I would be leaving my house at 02:45. I had also asked my girlfriend, Eileen, and my good photo buddy, Dave, if they wanted to come out to watch and shoot the launch as well, which they both wanted to come and enjoy the launch.
Getting to the location in Malibu, we started getting setup. I had hoped to shoot on my Rokinon 14mm lens, which very happily I was able to shoot on. I then settled on ISO 1000, f5.6, and a one minute exposure. I wanted to try to capture a light streak of the InSight Rocket going across the sky, as I knew it would be shooting southbound over us. With the 14mm prime I had on, I also knew that I would be seeing minimal star trails compared to the rocket launch, so I wasn't to worried about that issue.
After running around for a little trying to get a composition and test exposures, I got setup with about five minutes to spare to the launch. Dave had the official countdown going on his phone, and as the countdown went to zero, we started our shutters. However, we knew from where we were shooting, the rocket wouldn't be seen for several seconds after the countdown finished due to the mountain in front of us.
However, to our surprise, the rocket took almost 45 seconds before we were able to see it, and it came out of a slightly different area than we had originally thought. We were thinking that the rocket would come out from behind the rock in the center of the image, but we saw it come over the mountain on the right side of the frame. At that point, we just click the shutter, and watch the rocket shoot. The whole event was over in about two and a half minutes, as the rocket flew over us, stage one booster separated, then disappeared into the night sky.
