Processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic. Minor light and color adjustments, primarily to bring out the Milky Way and sunrise colors.

This is the exhaust plume from the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink-21 mission. The rocket's trajectory took it up the East Coast, and I was lucky to find a break in the clouds in Central Virginia. This photo has not been processed much at all, as it was this bright and colorful in person. The bright light is caused by the sunrise reflecting off the second stage exhaust gasses before the sky beneath is illuminated. This also created noctilucent clouds which are an extremely rare phenomenon of ice forming in the mesosphere.