Amur residents in social networks are vigorously discussing the unusual heavenly glow that residents of several settlements in the Amur Region managed to observe today
"Meteorite in the Amur region" and "unsuccessful launch of a rocket from the cosmodrome", residents of Blagoveshchensk and Belogorsk, Shimanovsk and Uglegorsk are trying to guess, posting photos and videos of a bright flash and a white trace in the sky.
Some users believe that they have witnessed a meteorite fall. “However, the proximity of the Vostochny cosmodrome suggests that a rocket was launched at night at the cosmodrome, possibly unsuccessful. In the morning, a curved plume of smoke from a rocket was seen in the sky over the Amur Region. From its trajectory, you can understand that something went wrong during the flight,”they say.
“The launch would have been reported, but there were no messages here. And it is unlikely that anything else can be launched from the local cosmodrome, they will not deliver it on time,”- Amur residents doubt in social networks.
The Amur department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations reported that no messages about the event were received by the department.
Professor of the Department of Physics and Methods of Teaching Physics at BSPU Lyudmila Karatsuba, who also observed the heavenly glow, believes that this is a halo. This phenomenon can be observed in December and January, when there are many hexagonal crystals in the air. They are reflected when the sun's rays pass through the atmosphere. If the air in Blagoveshchensk was cleaner, the glow would look even fuller and brighter, the professor suggested.
“There are many types of halos, and they are mainly caused by ice crystals in cirrus clouds at an altitude of 5-10 kilometers in the upper troposphere. The type of halo depends on the shape and location of the crystals”, - such a description of the phenomenon can be found in open sources.
A physics teacher at one of the Annunciation schools and an expert in astronomy does not exclude that Amur residents could observe a fireball that left a bright trace - the tail. The object, according to the specialist, having fallen into the Earth's gravity field, could have flown from the asteroid belt, which is located between Mars and Jupiter. “This, of course, is not a Chelyabinsk meteorite, but it may also be an interesting large object. Now it is difficult to say something definite about its size and what it consisted of. People cannot always see the car fall. Although fireballs cannot be called a rare phenomenon,”the specialist believes.
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