Triple Shockwave from Sun Crossing Rocket

xnx 32 points 5 comments June 15, 2026
apod.nasa.gov · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (4 comments)

thanatos519

So many scientific principles visible in one image. Astounding!

pimlottc

There’s a hyphen missing from the original title that changes the meaning significantly… it should read “Sun-Crossing Rocket”

jrjrjrkrfkfkkr

US is using nazis to develop rockets yet again!

dredmorbius

There are a few other examples of rocket-launch shockwaves being visible from the ground, captured on video. This one shows a shock through clouds over the launch site, at about 1m40s: < https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=p0xY69kUtdU&t=102 >. Shockwaves below the rocket are visible at about 20--30s in this Starship launch: < https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=P-9_hPDbhrg&t=18 >. (There are several other Starship launches showing sonic effects, though I suspect those may be related to the sheer noise level rather than velocity-based sonic booms.) The most interesting one for me (and what I'd been looking for finding the above two clips) was an Atlas V launch which generated visible radiating ripples, like water on a pond around a thrown stone, seen here at about 1m50s: < https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=UXlzVvCx3Aw&t=110 > And another APOD sun-related launch shock image which again seems noise- rather than velocity-based, beautiful in its own way, here: < https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240928.html >.

Semantic search powered by Rivestack pgvector
10,715 stories · 100,765 chunks indexed