Unknown orange/red glow over Pacific Ocean
 

A Dutch pilot flying for an unnamed airline saw an unknown orange/red glow over Pacific Ocean while enroute from Hong Kong to Alaska.

No idea what it is. Looks like a vulcano eruption.

Here the pilot's story and more photos
Unknown orange/red glow over Pacific Ocean - August 24, 2014 Photo Gallery by Flying Dutchman at pbase.com


http://m1.i.pbase.com/t9/23/582523/4...1.BeCtINyg.jpg

Could have been this...
 

A top-secret weapon being developed by the US military was destroyed four seconds after its launch from a test range in Alaska early on Monday after controllers detected a problem with the system, the Pentagon said. The Advanced Hypersonic Weapon is part of a program to create a missile that will destroy targets anywhere on Earth within an hour - traveling at speeds in excess of 3,500 miles-an-hour or Mach 5. The mission was aborted to ensure public safety, and no one was injured in the incident, which occurred shortly after 4 am EDT at the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska, said Maureen Schumann, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Defense Department.

Despite the pilot's doubts about the green glow: "the strange green glow that was all over the Northern Hemisphere. I think it was sort of a Northern Lights but it was much more dispersed, never seen anything like this before.." I reckon from the photographs that it is indeed Aurora ( you can get "all sky" aurora if you're in the right place at the right time, sometimes it's diffuse.., sometimes it isn't and is very impressive).

That said I really have no idea about the red glow.

The glow event was 4.5hrs flying time from Alaska,so unlikely to have been the failed rocket.

TWT
Rocket was destroyed shortly after launch - 4 secs but who's to know how far it flew given the speeds the poster says there trying to achieve. The aurora I would say is the mostly lightly suspect on some of the photos. I have seen it quite often Salmon fishing in northern latitude's as well as flying up there, but the multi coloured dots have me beat less it is said rocket , or possible gas burning as I have heard of gas being released before earthquakes. Will be interested to see what others think.

Glowing lights underneath the clouds photo - Flying Dutchman photos at pbase.com

That isn't aurora, its under them.

And the exposure is 8s at F2.8 at 12800 ISO with a 10.5mm fish eye. Which will screw with things somewhat.

Yep, I think we're agreed on that.

As reference ('cos I'm not up to speed on this) when I used to dabble in astrophotography a 30s/1 min exposure on a standard 56mm lens at ISO 400 would give decent picture of aurora without any obvious start trails. Don't know how the bloggers numbers fit in with that, I'll leave it to the experts.

(are you smelling "Photoshop"??....closest thing I've seen to lights on the ground like that is the Dutch greenhouses you see coming towards Lambourne from the east at O dark thirty AM in the winter....Cynic? Me???)

I'm smelling a fishing fleet.

The Mach 5 weapon has no warhead just kinetic energy, the explosion was the launch vehicle

Ian,
Wrong rocket methinks.

SLFguy - Mea culpa, thanks for the correction. Vid removed.

Some plankton has fluorescent properties and can be seen as a glow on the oceans.

I would have thought an 8 second exposure would have caused some light trails. an earlier picture has a 30 second exposure and the image is very clear. To hold a D800 camera rock steady for 30secs without a tripod and a remote shutter releases is quite a feat especially in an aircraft that is flying into the night at +/- 500MPH. My canon 5d mk2 is about the same weight and i can't achieve that type of steadiness for 30 secs with a fisheye.... but the exif is there so I wonder how it was achieved. Interesting series of pictures though.

There are many active volcanoes on Kamchatka. Could be one...

Earthquake Lights?

Bizarre Earthquake Lights Finally Explained

Necessary, I suppose
 

But I wish it weren't.

IMHO no, from experience with a standard lens/wide angle you can get away with anything up to perhaps a minute without obvious trailing. Clearly it's a different matter with a long lens/telescope.

Again from experience if you're lucky, and it's a smooth night it's just about possible. I used to photograph aurora by jamming an SLR (OM-10 or even a Zenith :eek:) up against the number 2 or 3 flight deck window. The piccies wouldn't be exhibition quality -the star images would be slightly trailed due to aircraft motion (usually in roll) but the aurora images good enough for basic logging/research purposes. I would post one as an example but they're still on slides and in a box..somewhere safe..:sad:

All in all I reckon the aurora images look like the real thing, still no idea about the red lights/glow other than a guess that it's down to fishing of some sort???

Don't think those streaks are auroral, they look to me like sensor noise brought out by post processing. I sometimes do star shots with RAW files on a D800 as well and when you play with the sliders and curves to bring out low contrast features like the Milky Way you get similar artifacts.

Like others, I'm more than a little skeptical that you can do a 30 second exposure from a plane on a NOPAC route and still get sharp star images, even with a 10.5 mm lens. And, if the exposure was actually 1/30th of a second instead through an EXIF data typo, I don't think you would see the Andromeda Galaxy even with the great sensor on the D800 (M31 is high in the center of the first picture in the gallery linked in the first post on this thread).

The Dutchman's other picture galleries are very nice and the site seems to be legit. I've seen some odd things over the years on that route including staging rockets, noctilucent clouds and satellite glints. And, we've all seen those surprisingly bright fishing fleet lights glowing under a cloud layer.

Still, not sure what the red glow would be. :confused:

the shorter the focal length the longer the exposure can be without trails. 11mm I have taken 90 second exposures and no trails visible.

http://www.grelf.net/star_trails.html

Well to my eye those streaks could well be a coronal form of the aurora, and on closer inspection there's also some evidence of red patches, which you do get with the higher energy auroral displays.

http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora

https://www.google.fr/search?q=coron...w=1013&bih=632


Well from the NAT tracks I believe ;) it is perfectly possible to capture images that the professional aurora researchers can use...perhaps using a standard lens, ISO 400 film, 30 second exposure....You do however need to adopt a bit of a scatter gun approach (lots of frames, hope 1 or 2 are OK).

I would however agree that M31 might well be a stretch, must have a look at some of my old "work" when I can find it to do a comparison :bored: but it's very much old tech....

:ok: Like wise.

Now, about the red low level glows............