{"id":37365,"date":"2022-11-10T12:56:10","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T19:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/falcon-9-rocket-seen-soaring-through-la-plata-county-sky\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T08:37:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:37:05","slug":"falcon-9-rocket-seen-soaring-through-la-plata-county-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/falcon-9-rocket-seen-soaring-through-la-plata-county-sky\/","title":{"rendered":"Falcon 9 rocket seen soaring through La Plata County sky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Falcon 9 rocket is seen traveling across the sky Oct. 27 from the La Paloma subdivision southeast of Durango. (Courtesy of Cole Hyson)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A beam of light was seen streaking across the evening sky Oct. 27 from various locations in La Plata County.<\/p>\n

Cole Hyson, who lives southeast of Durango, captured a photo of the object on his iPhone at 7:20 p.m. Hyson was notified of the object by a friend who had just left Hyson\u2019s house and was driving on Farmington Hill.<\/p>\n

Hyson said he immediately ran outside and could see the object streaking across the sky over the Black Ridge area.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe called me going, \u2018Oh my, what is that?\u2019 And I ran outside and it was moving,\u201d Hyson said.<\/p>\n

He was unsure of what it was he was seeing. His son has since done some research and discovered it may have been a Falcon 9 rocket that launched from California\u2019s Vandenberg Space Force Base. The Vandenberg launch was scheduled for 6:14 p.m. PST, which would align with the 7:20 p.m. MST sighting in Colorado.<\/p>\n

Excited about the object, Hyson shared photos with friends and family. His friend said cars were lined up along the side of U.S. Highway 550 to take in the sight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty spectacular but it didn\u2019t last very long,\u201d he said. \u201cIt lasted maybe a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fort Lewis College physics and engineering professor William Nollet confirmed the sighting was a rocket launch from the Vandenberg Space Force Base. He said rocket launches from California are typically visible in Colorado and are more noticeable shortly after sunset.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of it depends on the positioning of the sun,\u201d Nollet said. \u201cWhat happens is the sun sets in the west and that dips below the horizon but light still curves around the Earth. So in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, that sunlight is still kind of shining through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time Hyson has seen strange objects flying through the sky near the La Paloma subdivision. He said 10 years ago he witnessed a similar event where an object was flying through the sky when another object took it down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw something in the sky and I was able to get my binoculars on it and there were like engine flames coming off. Then something came out of nowhere in smoke and blew it up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He later found out it was a missile test being conducted in Gallup, New Mexico, and the missile was shot down over White Sands Missile Range.<\/p>\n

tbrown@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

launch was based out of the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[731,950,28,475],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-37365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-bayfield","tag-durango","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-colorado"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83646,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37365\/revisions\/83646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37365"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=37365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}