In the right place at the right time, Guillaume Poulin photographed the exhaust fumes from a rocket going into space, which we could see in the region’s skies at the end of the week. .
It was Saturday evening, September 24, around 7:40 p.m. while he was installing telescopes at the AstroLab in Mont Mégantic National Park, where he has worked for almost 20 years.
It was the American company SpaceX that launched a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida on the east coast of the United States.
“I knew there was a start but had no idea we were going to see it from home. You could actually see the bright spot of the rocket engine. I just caught it coming into orbit and shutting down its engines,” he told EnBeauce.com in a phone interview. It was actually the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket.
He clarified that at that point everything was pointed in his direction: the rocket, which was on the right trajectory, and the fact that there were no clouds. “Also, the launch timing coincided with the correct hour, when the sun has set, but not too far below the horizon, so the gases were still illuminated by the sun. »
Guillaume Poulin is originally from Sherbrooke and is 38 years old. Since his youth he has been enthusiastic about the heavenly world.