It seems that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 not only provides political controversy in the States, it also gives a little entertainment on the other side of the world.
Observers in Australia spotted a little “spiral”, like what happened in Scandinavia last fall, giving the Aussies a little light show and speculations about UFOs:
Yesterday, a lot of Australians reported seeing a bizarre UFO.
Just before 6:00 a.m. local time, numerous reports came in about a spiral of light in the sky with a bright central spot. The light was actually spinning around, like a pinwheel! One site has pretty cool video of it, and pictures are turning up on the web as well.
Sound familiar? Yeah, it should: these reports are almost exactly like a spiral shaped light seen over Norway last year. The Norway sighting — a picture of it is below, on the right — was positively identified as a Russian missile, so of course as soon as I heard of this new Aussie sighting the first thing I thought of was that it was a rocket booster.
So I leaned over my keyboard and was about to Google “rocket launch schedule” or something similar, when I suddenly stopped. I smiled, leaned back, and almost literally facepalmed myself. Gee, I thought to myself,what rocket would’ve launched yesterday morning?
Duh: the SpaceX Falcon 9! The private company successfully held its first test launch of the big rocket, blasting off from its Florida pad at 18:45 UT Friday — which is 04:45 Sydney, Australia time.
I am not a huge fan of the “Bad Astronomer” simply because of his black and white debunker views are a little too dogmatic for my tastes, but in this case I have to believe what he posits here. The evidence is just too strong.
Many things in the sky can be mistaken for anomalous objects; planes, jets, rockets, satellites, space stations, space shuttles, etc are often objects of mistaken identity.
Sometimes, a rocket is a rocket.
Dad2059's Webzine of Science Fiction, Science Fact and Esoterica 