There Was A Weird Bright Red Cloud Trail Over The East Coast

Jennifer WelshJan 30, 2013, 04:02 IST

If you were on the East coast on Tuesday night and saw a bright red streak through the sky, you weren't alone. A NASA rocket test left a trail of red light through the night sky, as a test run in preparation for the launch of two upcoming space observation missions, according to Discover Magazine's 80 Beats blog.

Here's the rocket:

Image courtesy of NASA / Wallops Flight FacilityThe rocket.

The red glow came from two exploding lithium canisters ignited after launch. They left trails that were high enough to be illuminated by the glow of the sun, turning them red.

These trails were visible from lots of places on the Eastern seaboard (from Canada to Florida). The rocket launched around 6 PM, EST, from Wallops Island, Virginia. Here's the map of where you should have been able to see the red trails:

Image courtesy of NASA / Wallops Flight FacilityLaunch visibility map. The blue line indicates the rocket's projected course. The circles show where and when the vapor trails should be visible. Here's the rocket as it launched. It then successfully deployed its canisters of lithium.

Here are a few images of the trails over the East Coast. They are smaller than the trailed made by last year's launch, but, "everything worked as planned," Wallops officials said on the livestream.

?@kristynmags Send your pictures of the rocket to jwelsh@businessinsider.com or tweet @bi_sci.

Cookies on the Business Insider India website

There Was A Weird Bright Red Cloud Trail Over The East Coast