You Can See the Explosion from Orbit



Exactly What It Says on the Tin: There's an explosion, and we see it from orbit.

On the "sliding scale of blowed up real good", this is much larger than Impressive Pyrotechnics, but much smaller than an Earthshattering Kaboom.

This tends to show up more often in science fiction action series and movies, but it occasionally appears in fantasy works as well.

Bonus points if you can hear the explosion.

Anime and Manga

 * You can see the explosions from orbit in Super Dimension Fortress Macross when the main Zentradi fleet arrives.
 * Played for Laughs in the Hot Springs Episode of Rental Magica. (There's a chance this might be an Actor Allusion: the two characters involved were played by Mikako Takahashi and Kana Ueda.)

Film

 * Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has an example early on, when the Death Star "test fires" its main cannon.
 * Aliens, during the flight off-planet at the end
 * The end of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Literature

 * While he was generally on the side of huge explosions being a bad thing, H. Beam Piper not only  in Uller Uprising, Space Viking (one of the most Badass names in literature) featured three uses of the Bethe-cycle bomb, commonly known as the "hellburner." What does this do, you ask? This creates A MINIATURE SUN WHICH LASTS SEVERAL HOURS in the target area, destroying everything within about a thousand miles. Anyone pack the marshmallows? The craters are still smoking roughly two weeks later.

Live-Action TV

 * Lexx, when the Foreshadow nukes the Brunen G homeworld in the beginning (and as a replay in the musical episode).
 * Stargate Atlantis (see the page image).

Web Comics

 * Being a parody of the Star Wars movies, Darths and Droids has the same explosions as those movies, including the one visible from orbit in Rogue One.

Real Life

 * Whenever a dinosaur-killer asteroid hits Earth, the resulting impact - which may as well be an explosion - can be seen from orbit.
 * Nuclear explosions of most magnitudes are visible from orbit, at least as a flash of light approximately as bright as the star Vega. But that's not nearly as dramatic as the other explosions listed on this page.