Several people in the Montreal area also witnessed the strange phenomenon\u00a0and reached out to CBC News\u00a0describing a bright light enveloped by a fuzzy halo\u00a0and warning of a UFO sighting.<\/p>\n
While it was certainly unusual, it wasn’t really an unidentified flying object, but more likely the\u00a0result of a rocket launch,\u00a0according to the Astrolab.<\/p>\n
“It was in all likelihood the second stage of an Ariane 6 rocket which was igniting its engine in order to de-orbit itself after having released the European satellite Metop-SGA1 in a polar orbit,” the Facebook post explained.<\/p>\n
The European Space Agency confirmed on its website that a weather satellite was launched Tuesday evening at 9:37 p.m. local time, from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana \u2014\u00a0an overseas\u00a0department of France located\u00a0in South America.<\/p>\n
The new satellite is meant to usher in “a new era of weather and climate monitoring from polar orbit.”<\/p>\n
WATCH | What was that bright object flying in the sky over Quebec: ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755139507_20_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
A UFO? A plane? What was that bright white object flying over Quebec Tuesday night?<\/p>\n
If you thought aliens might be visiting, you may be disappointed to learn it was actually a rocket called Ariane 6 that streaked across Quebec’s night sky on Aug. 12. It launched from French Guiana just after 9:37 p.m. local time, carrying a satellite into space.<\/p>\n
According to astrophysicist Robert Lamontagne, the rocket’s orbit is what allowed for the spectacle to be visible in Quebec.<\/p>\n
Most of the time rocket launches are on an equatorial orbit and so will be visible near the equator, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a polar orbit, the rocket has to go around the earth circling each pole of the planet.<\/p>\n
“So the the trajectory of that the rocket made it so that from our latitude it could be seen in Montreal or the south of Quebec,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But to witness the phenomena,\u00a0other factors also need to align, according to Lamontagne, including the time of launch and the altitude reached by the rocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“From our point of view, we were in the dark, the sun\u00a0was low below the horizon, but the rocket itself was so high that\u00a0it was still lit by the by the sun,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And as the second stage of the rocket re-entered the earth’s atmosphere, he said, “it was spinning a little bit, there\u00a0was\u00a0 exhaust gases coming out from it and that’s what people saw in the sky.”<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the\u00a0Canadian Space Agency told CBC News that many observers\u00a0captured video of the event, with the agency confirming it was the ESA’s\u00a0 Ariane 6 rocket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With eyes turned to the skies, stargazers taking in the Perseid meteor shower on Tuesday night\u00a0witnessed something out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-67970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}