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Late last month, a bright, glowing orb appeared across the Alaskan sky, cutting across the view of the northern lights. The rotating blue circle was captured by aurora cameras and scientists believe they have isolated what the mysterious object is.
Bright ball of yarn light
The object appeared in the night sky over Alaska in the early morning hours of March 29. Eyewitnesses across the state reported seeing the bright orb and reported something "going inside of it." Live Science reports.
Fairbanks photographer Leslie Smallwood says the ball of light appeared much larger than the moon in the sky and moved from northeast to southwest over the course of a few minutes.
"It looks like it had something spinning inside of it when I zoomed in," he says. KTOO . News in Fairbanks. “And it's a little tail - a white tail. It's not like she was shot in the sky. It was like taking his time.”
The Twilight Focus Automatic Camera Trap operated by husband and wife Ron Murray and Markta Murray of The Aurora Chasers captured the giant ball. Their camera system takes pictures of the sky at about 45-second intervals all the time so that anyone can visit their location and enjoy the aurora borealis. This time around, the camera not only took pictures of the green-and-blue atmospheric phenomenon, but also took six pictures of the orb as it streaked across the sky.
Aurora Chasers Introduction betapixel With the animation below showing the object moving across the sky:
The object has sparked controversy over its origin and nature in the northernmost country, but scientists believe they know exactly what the mysterious orb is: a piece of a Chinese missile.
China's missile stage releases remaining fuel
The timing of the sighting of the orb in Alaska corresponds to the flight of a Chinese rocket that was carrying a satellite, says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Boston, Massachusetts, KTOO reports.
“I am very confident that what people saw was a fuel dump from a Chinese missile theater,” he says.
“This rocket - Longmarch 6A or Chang Zheng 6A - was launched early on March 29 from China, put two satellites into orbit, and, calculating its orbital trajectory, passed over the Yukon region at an altitude of about 350 miles at exactly the time this glowed. Seen in the sky of Alaska.
McDowell says the orb's size can likely be attributed to the rocket's launch of spent fuel into space, which instantly froze and scattered, reflecting sunlight, making it appear as if it was glowing to observers on Earth.
"This cloud is probably hundreds of miles away, which is why it looks so big," he says. KTOO.
He was also able to explain why observers report seeing something spinning in the center of the orb: in order to maintain its orbit during the release of excess fuel, the rocket enters the fall.
"Finish on the end while you're tossing that fuel in like a garden hose, and that's how you'll get that pattern of movement," he explains.
This type of phenomenon is not unique, it is more common in the extreme south, and its intersection with the aurora borealis is more common. However, a similar orb was described over Siberia in 2017 and was attributed to the exhaust from a ballistic missile test.
Image credits: All images provided by Ron and Markta Murray from The Aurora Chasers.
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