{"id":171470,"date":"2025-12-07T00:45:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T00:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/171470\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T00:45:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T00:45:09","slug":"strange-pillar-of-light-linked-to-chinese-rocket-test-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/171470\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange pillar of light linked to Chinese rocket test flight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A glowing streak spotted in the sky on Thursday morning was most likely caused by a Chinese rocket, experts say.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Witnesses reported a bright, linear trail visible around dawn and dusk from several locations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in the US, said: &#8220;It was definitely the Chinese Zhuque-3 rocket making its first test flight. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;It passed over the UK and northern Europe at around 05:00 GMT at the end of its first orbit, following launch from China at 04:02 GMT. Chinese upper stages have been previously observed to make long, linear propellant-dump trails.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Ellie Jarvis, from Clovelly, said: &#8220;I&#8217;ve never seen anything like it. At first, I wondered whether it might be something like an aurora or a natural phenomenon &#8211; like a light pillar.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;I tried to see whether there was something shining a beam of light from across the bay, or perhaps from a ship &#8211; but that didn&#8217;t  seem likely as the light seemed to be so high in the sky.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A jet contrail was also considered but dismissed because the trail appeared too widespread.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Similar vertical light effects, known as light pillars, can sometimes form when high-altitude ice crystals reflect low-angle sunlight, creating unusual atmospheric displays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A glowing streak spotted in the sky on Thursday morning was most likely caused by a Chinese rocket,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-171470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}