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Major media outlets and local authorities spread across the northeast corner of the United States were inundated with worried phone calls on Saturday evening after a creepy bank of light was seen spreading throughout the night sky.
Unusual light cloud spotted over US. Image: NASA.gov.
However, rather than being a precursor to alien invasion and the end of civilisation as we know it, the shock lightshow was quickly claimed by U.S. space administration NASA, which offered a perfectly feasible explanation for the event.
According to NASA spokesman Keith Kohler, the conical blanket of light was produced by exhaust particles spewing from the experimental Black Brant XII Suborbital Sounding Rocket.
Launched from the administration’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia at 19:47 EDT, just as the sun was setting, the rocket’s fourth stage artificially created a massive “polar mesospheric” cloud when cloud-creating particles were released at a height of 173 miles.
The resulting cloud will now be tracked for months as NASA attempts to learn more about the planet’s very highest cloud type, which is usually found at a height of around 50 miles.
Further explaining the unusual lightshow, a statement from NASA also outlined that such polar mesospheric clouds (a.k.a. noctilucent clouds) are usually not visible to the naked eye and can only be seen when bathed in sunlight emanating from below the horizon.
According to CNN, its affiliate stations from New Jersey to Massachusetts received calls describing a spectacular cone of light shining down through the sky at around sunset on Saturday night.
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