New Jersey wakes up to a strange sight in the sky as SpaceX rocket lights up dawn

✅A SpaceX rocket launch created a bright spectacle visible across NJ before sunrise

✅A New Jersey 101.5 staffer initially wondered if the object was a plane or comet

✅Why was the rocket looked unusually bright in the dark sky

SpaceX put on a light show around dawn in the skies over New Jersey on Tuesday.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station just before 6 a.m., according to Space.com. It was the unprecedented 37th mission for its first-stage reusable booster, called B1067. The booster successfully landed on the droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" in the Atlantic Ocean.

The rocket was topped with 29 Starlink satellites, which will go into low Earth orbit.

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New Jersey residents spotted the unusual sight

New Jersey 101.5 Traffic South's Jill Myra noticed something in the sky on her way to the station around 5:40 a.m. She thought it might be an airplane or a comet.

"You can really see the outline very clear. That was where I was questioning myself. But then I could see from other reports on Facebook that it was SpaceX," Myra said.

Launch aficionado Gene Hirschel in Toms River had cameras and video set up on the beach in Shelter Cove to capture the launch.

The timing of the launch, which had a window of four hours starting at 1:49 a.m., was special for even someone who has watched many SpaceX launches. Usually, it's the rocket itself that lights up the smoke.

"This one was very, very special because it was early morning. So the pictures I got, the rocket was lit by the sun, even though the sun hadn't come up for us. That's why it was so bright and clear. That's very unusual. At nighttime, we don't see that brightness," Hirschel said.

Space X launch over the Shelter Cove section of Toms River Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026

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