This experience was a Blast!
This past weekend SpaceX had a scheduled launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base. This was to be the first launch taken from the west coast on land. I happened to be over at a friends house at the time of the launch. To my surprise I was under the impression I had missed the launch the day before. The launch was set to start at 7:21 pm Pacific Standard time and it did on the dot. We all wandered out on the the street corner were it was clear of buildings and watched the entire launch. All photos were screenshots from a video taken on a Galaxy S5 Neo. The low light capabilities of the S5 Neo are not that great.
The rocket started out as a red dot off on the horizon that slowly ascended.
The red went away and it was just a white dot that kept flying up. My phone had the flash on and when fully zoomed in would create a lens flare, which is the lower left dot in the photo.
Suddenly the rocket completely disappeared and everything went dark. We were all confused, had the rocket failed? Notice the lens flare is still in the photo as the white dot.
Just as sudden as the rocket had disappeared, it reappeared in the sky. I figured the first stage rocket boosters had ended and it was beginning the second stage disengagement.
The scene in the sky started to grow as the Falcon 9 shed its reusable first stage rocket.
As both stages separated, the second stage began to climb once more with the first stage reusable section using boosters to return to earth.
The cloud of debris grew larger as both sections moved apart.
The scene took up a huge section of the sky and it was easily understood how a person could confuse this launch with something nefarious if they were not informed.
The first stage headed back down to earth as both sections left the cloud that was created.
The weirdest thing about this launch was that the reusable stage was using a type of booster that would create waves behind it as it descended. Nothing like this was observed while the Falcon 9 was ascending upward. A wavelike formation behind the rocket on the right is noticeable in the photo above.
Eventually the earth bound section disappeared.
Soon after the giant cloud that was created during separation became non existent with just the second stage visible, shooting up into the sky.
It was at this point we all shut off the video, and talked about what we had just seen. The entire launch took a total of 5 minutes, so it went pretty quickly. The earth bound section eventually became visible once more on the horizon where the launch had started, glowing red as it landed. This was a once in a lifetime experience indeed. The whole thing brought me back to the manned launches and just the time when NASA was an actual functioning space agency. Thanks for following along on this momentous event!
All photos, unless otherwise stated or sourced, were taken by 
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