"We were warned by our NASA escort to not touch our faces after handling equipment coated in the solid rocket exhaust and to wash our hands ASAP after arriving back at the KSC Press Site."
Next picture: touches exhaust residue with bare hands. Please, use gloves!
"Using a glass filter triples the area that dew can form prior to liftoff."
A-ha, it is time to start building heated glass filters for rocket photography enthusiasts!
http://philhart.com/content/dew-heaters-night-sky-photograph...
https://www.amazon.com/COOWOO-Warmer-Heater-Universal-Telesc...
From the reddit thread where the photographer posted this, they're planning to get some:
https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/81fu6u/the_res...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxyl-terminated_polybutadi...
Essentially they add Al because it burns well and has a high mass which ups the mass of the exhaust gasses and as a result gives you more thrust
The rubbery plastic binder is a fuel. The Aluminum is a high-energy fuel. The "ammonium" part of ammonium perchlorate is a fuel, and the "perchlorate" part is an oxidizer.
The amount of aluminum is limited to prevent the temperature from getting too high and because it makes low-energy exhaust particles. Good exhaust particles are low-mass gasses with few degrees of freedom in the molecular shape. Aluminum oxide forms solid particles consisting of many atoms stuck together, which is pretty useless.
Not of any life form that can survive that.