The Sharpest Eye On The Sky: Pete Carstens And Max Q Productions

Pete Carstens is a man who can see things almost no one else can. Long after launch spectators and even launch photographers have called it a day, Pete continues tracking the launch, watching the streaking rocket sometimes almost all the way to orbit. Fortunately, he shares everything he sees, making space flight journalism all the better for it.

“I try to shoot every launch whether out at the Cape, or from my home on the Space Coast,” Carstens says. “Lately the only launches I miss are if I am out of town.”

Along with Chuck and Jen Briggs of C&J Images and a handful of highly talented staff photographers, Carstens’ company, Max Q Productions, provides the bulk of the original live launch coverage that Spaceflight Now produces. SFN is one of the highest-tier independent space news organizations that provide live launch coverage and commentary and is trusted by tens of thousands of space enthusiasts around the world as an original, accurate and pleasant place to catch up on all things space-related.

Here in Florida, people often use SFN not only for the news they report, but also to keep up with the last hour of a countdown until the conclusion of launch activities. It’s not uncommon for spectators to have a Spaceflight Now livestream playing on their cellphone while they are watching the launch on the beach, beside the Indian River or even at Kennedy Space Center. If there is news, Spaceflight Now will be among the very first to share it.

Seeing What No One Else Can

Rockets travel far and fast, and after a liftoff, it’s never more than a couple of minutes before they are hard to see as a spectator on the ground with the naked eye. At night, after staging, one might see the launching rocket as a dot of light moving across the sky, but not much more than that. During the day, it’s even harder to see.

That’s where Pete Carstens and Max Q comes in. Using his gear, Pete can not only still see the rocket, he can also track a SpaceX booster’s “entry burn” from a couple hundred miles away.

Photographers using the highest-end zoom lenses can’t often resolve a rocket that’s fifty miles (80 km) high and traveling a few thousand miles per hour even if they can capture great views of the engines’ flame plume.

Pete Carstens Gear

How does Pete Carstens do it? “The main unit is a Kintec that has been refurbished by Ed Geiger,” Carstens said. Geiger is a legendary launch videographer who was one of the first to do what was previously the domain of NASA and the US Air Force—tracking rockets with huge telescopes purpose-fit for the task.

“It [the motorized telescope mount] is controlled manually by joystick,” Carstens tells us. “Mounted on it is a 12″ and 8″ telescope along with a 750mm lens as well as a wide lens that I use to acquire the rocket if it moves out of frame due to clouds. That’s four cameras mounted on the tracker.”

As far as cameras, Carstens says, “I’m currently using two Canon R5’s at 4k (can do 8k but overheating is an issue) and a 90D at 4k. I also use a stationary 90D with a 4″ telescope that I’ll use when at KSC for lift off at the launch pad at 120 FPS for slow motion clips.”

How Pete Got Started

Carstens, like many launch photographers, got his start when he moved to the Sunshine State. “I relocated to Florida with my job and family in 2019 and started photographing and taking videos immediately. It took me about one to two years to get my 14″ telescope to be able to track manually with the software provided by Astronomy Live. They can be found on X @astrofreg. I then partnered with US Launch Report and started using one of Ed Geiger’s trackers that he refurbished and have since also partnered with Spaceflight Now.”

That’s not always easy. Florida weather is notoriously fickle. It can be raining heavily in one spot, and as little as a single mile away, skies might be partly cloudy. “Weather can be a big issue and in the Florida summer months, it gets quite chaotic,” Carstens told us. “It can be clear at the launch pad and raining 5 miles away. I live about 20 miles south of Cape Canaveral and it can be a very different view from what is going on at the Cape with the guys at Spaceflight Now. It can work in my favor in that Cape Canaveral is completely socked in and clear down at my location.”

We asked what Pete’s favorite launches to capture are, and he said, “I would say any launch around sunset with clear skies are the best. Several launches have key moments that stand out but the Falcon Heavy USSF-67 mission on January 15, 2023 was pretty spectacular, even though my settings were a little off.”

Pete’s Tips To Hobbyist Photographers

We asked Carstens if he had any advice for amateur photographers trying to take good launch photographs. “Start with a good tripod and a good fluid mount or a 360-degree rotatable panoramic gimbal tripod head ball mount,” he said. “Also a good lens or ‘good glass’.”

Some other advice that Carstens offers is something that amateurs sometimes forget to do, and that’s to record their settings, the conditions at launch as well as the location where they took their photos. “Write down your camera settings for each launch as well as the time of day and conditions and adjust as needed and compare,” Carstens advises. “For instance, there is a huge difference if the sun is behind you vs in front of you. Also, time of year, summer brings humidity (dirty air) vs winter with less humidity (cleaner air) You really notice the difference with a highly magnified lens.”

Dirty, Shimmery, Heat-Distorted Air

That “dirty air” that Pete mentions is also called “heat distortion,” “shimmer,” or sometimes “a mirage.” Being that a photographer will always be several miles from the launch pad, the light from the rocket and the launch tower has to go a very long way to reach the camera. The temperature and humidity of the air varies over the length of the distance between the camera and rocket, and that changes its optical qualities very slightly. A good example that anyone should be familiar with is stars “twinkling” at night — that’s heat distortion.

The best solution for dirty air is to be as close as possible to reduce the distance between the lens and the rocket, but that’s not always possible. Shimmer reduces quickly on the rocket as it flies off the launch pad and almost disappears as the angle from the ground increases. Consider that, and also remember to take the best photograph the local situation allows.

Carstens’ advice about using good lenses is sage as well: rockets turn into tiny objects in the sky, and high-quality glass resolves them more clearly, resulting in a better photo. That setup should be mounted to a solid tripod that’s steady, coupled with a camera mount that operates smoothly.

Photographing launches effectively also takes practice and experimentation, so taking good notes is almost a requirement for a serious launch photographer.

See Also: How To Take A Good Launch Streak Photo

How To Follow Pete Carstens Online

If you’d like to keep up with Pete’s work, he told us that “I provide live launch tracking for Spaceflight Now on their live YouTube channel. I also post still images from the video and then edit together the different focal length shots to a video that I post on my YouTube channel at Max-Q Productions – (@maxqproductions1) and then post to the following Social sites, X – @CarstensPete, Instagram – @pete_carstens, Facebook – pete.carstens.56, [and on] TikTok – @petecarstens3.”

Give him a follow on one or more of those channels. If you enjoy incredible images of rockets in flight, you will be glad that you did.