SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk celebrated the successful launch and catch of Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, by sharing some extremely high-detail footage captured with an expensive camera lens.
The footage was captured by Andrew McCarthy, an astrophotographer who captures incredibly detailed images of astronomical objects from his backyard in Arizona. McCarthy posts the photos and videos to his Instagram account "cosmic_background," which has gained more than 1.6 million followers as of the time of reporting. As for Starship, McCarthy explained via X that he rented a $17,000 lens to capture SpaceX's milestone rocket launch and catch. The results simply speak for themselves.
McCarthy explains in captions within the video that each frame seen is hand-tracked and hand-stabilized. Additionally, the astrophotographer was able to track Starship all the way to orbit at 50 miles altitude, and capture the stage separation moment when Super Heavy disconnected from Starship to make its descent journey back down to Earth and eventual landing on the launch pad it took off from.
McCarthy has also shared his best photos from the event and compiled them all into one composite shot that can be seen above. For those that don't know, Super Heavy is approximately the same height as a 20-story building and weighs multiple tonnes. Now imagine attempting to launch and catch a small building and the difficulty of that task.