Before sunrise on Tuesday, Oct. 13, the sky over Satellite Beach lit up with the glowing, rippling exhaust of a SpaceX Falcon 9, and a reader caught it on camera.

The rocket was carrying a Dragon cargo ship on CRS-35, SpaceX's 35th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station for NASA. It lifted off at 6:33 a.m. from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, according to SpaceX and NASA.

The reader shared five photos with the Space Coast Wire. The camera's timestamps run from 6:38 to 6:47 a.m., which works out to about five to 14 minutes after liftoff.

What you're seeing

Pre-dawn and post-sunset launches can produce what people on the Space Coast often call a "space jellyfish." The ground is still dark, but the rocket's exhaust high above is already in sunlight. That makes the plume glow and spread into shells and swirls that can hang in the sky for several minutes after the rocket has gone.

The photos follow that plume from a bright trail with the rocket at its tip to a wide, feathery cloud and, finally, a faint swirl as the sky turned blue.

The mission

• Rocket and pad: Falcon 9, Space Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (SpaceX).
• Cargo: More than 6,300 pounds of supplies, science experiments and hardware, including the final pair of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (NASA).
• Booster: It was the first stage's eighth flight. It came back to land at Landing Zone 40 at the Cape (SpaceX).
• Dragon: This was the capsule's fourth flight. It had already flown CRS-26, CRS-29 and CRS-33 (SpaceX).
• Arrival: Dragon docked to the space-facing port of the station's Harmony module at 10:27 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 15 (NASA).

NASA says astronauts will install the new solar arrays on spacewalks later this fall. It also says Dragon is scheduled to stay at the station until mid-November and then return to Earth with research and cargo, splashing down off the California coast (NASA).

All times are Eastern. Photos courtesy of a Satellite Beach reader. Have launch photos you took yourself? We'd like to see them.