Falcon Heavy Launch Visible Tonight?

There is a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch tonight at 11:04pm that should be visible from the Callaway Gardens Country Store, weather permitting. The FH will be lifting the largest ever geostationary satellite into orbit, the EchoStar XXIV (Jupiter 3). Since this is a launch to geostationary orbit the trajectory from KSC is almost due east. That means the various stages won’t get very high above the horizon, just 6° at max for the side boosters.

The nice thing about viewing from the Country Store is the street lamp on the distant ridge line. This makes a great marker on where to look for the rocket as it climbs above the horizon. The photo at the top of the page is from a Falcon 9 launch, the graphic below shows what may be visible tonight.

The red line is the path of the two side boosters, the white line is the second stage, and the gray line is the center booster.

Visibility should be good up to the point where the white and red lines meet, after that things become problematic. Once the center booster shuts down it probably won’t be visible any more. The second stage may still be visible with optical aids. The side boosters may disappear once the boost back burn is complete but they should be visible again during the entry burn just before they disappear below the horizon.

The launch window is from 10:34pm until 01:18am so be prepared to hang out for a bit if there are any holds during the count.

UPDATE: The launch last night was aborted with one-minute, five-seconds left in the count. They will try again tonight (27 July) at the same time.