This morning., right before 6 a.m., Maddie and I left the house to take our morning walk. It was still about 3/4 of an hour before sunrise, but the eastern sky was starting to glow a bit. Venus and Jupiter were both showing off their brightness, and Mars and Saturn, farther to the south and higher in the sky, were dim but still visible. But what really amazed me was a weird cloud formation that looked like a heavenly portrait of one of those aliens the UFO-crazies claim abducted them. I've included the photo below:
It certainly doesn't look natural, does it? Makes one think a skywriter was out early this morning before he sobered up. I took the photo standing in our street looking due east. Venus and Jupiter are both visible to the right of the weird cloud.
Anyway, lest you think aliens were sending us a coded message in the morning sky, when Maddie and I returned home I noticed a text from NASA (Yes, NASA sends me texts about all their launches and other doings) on my phone informing me of the launch of a spacecraft with the clever name, Falcon 9 Block 5. It had lifted off from Kennedy Space Center at 5:42 this morning. We often observe these launches since our home here in The Villages is due west of Cape Canaveral. I'm pretty sure this early morning launch was the cause of our pre-dawn weird cloud formation. The upper winds in our lower atmosphere can do strange things to vapor trails and rocket exhaust.
Sadly, I was hoping for something a bit more eerie, some unexplained phenomenon that the government would try to cover up; but alas it seems even ET in the morning sky can be explained.
Hope you like the photo though. Click on the photo for a full-sized view.
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