The key facts
- Residents of Syktyvkar filmed a glowing trail in the sky after the launch of a Soyuz-2.1b from Plesetsk
- The Ministry of Defense reported placing a spacecraft into orbit in the interests of the defense ministry
- A similar phenomenon was observed in late October in China's Shanxi province after a Long March-6A launch
A glowing phenomenon over Syktyvkar
Residents of Syktyvkar noticed huge glowing swirls in the night sky, resembling a giant translucent creature, and shared the footage on the Telegram channel SHOT. The video shows a glowing trail spreading across the dark sky, gradually taking on a bizarre shape. The phenomenon appeared after the launch of a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region.
What the military confirmed and why the effect occurs
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the launch was carried out by a combat crew of the Space Forces of the Aerospace Forces, and the rocket successfully placed into orbit a spacecraft intended for tasks in the interests of the defense ministry. The effect itself is explained by physics: the exhaust gases of the rocket engine expand in the rarefied upper layers of the atmosphere, and sunlight illuminates the resulting cloud — against the dark sky it looks like a huge glowing formation.
A similar phenomenon in China
As Life.ru notes, at the end of October residents of China's Shanxi province observed a similar 'space jellyfish' — a giant glowing dome of an orange-red hue appeared over the Great Wall of China after the launch of a Long March-6A carrier rocket from the Taiyuan cosmodrome. That rocket placed the Yaogan-50 03 Earth remote sensing satellite into orbit. Thus, both cases are not anomalies but a visual consequence of nighttime rocket launches, which is becoming increasingly well known thanks to footage from eyewitnesses.
