That jellyfish in the Georgia sky this morning? It was a rocket

Georgians who looked up before sunrise Tuesday and saw a glowing, jellyfish-shaped cloud drifting across the sky were not losing their minds. They were watching the exhaust trail from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 6:33 a.m.

What happened: The rocket was carrying supplies to the International Space Station. As it climbed, its exhaust plume caught sunlight at high altitude while the ground below was still dark, creating a bright, drifting shape visible across much of Georgia and into northeast Florida.

Why it looked like that: Rocket exhaust is mostly water vapor and carbon dioxide. In the thin upper atmosphere, those gases spread out fast. When sunlight hits them from below the horizon, the particles scatter the light and glow. The bright center of the plume looks like the bell of a jellyfish. The wispy trails behind it look like tentacles. High-altitude winds can twist the whole thing into stranger shapes. The effect only happens when a rocket launches just before sunrise or just after sunset, when the ground is dark but the upper atmosphere is already lit.

The mission: The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is carrying more than 6,300 pounds of scientific experiments, supplies, and equipment for the crew aboard the station. It is expected to dock Thursday.