Freaky green lights spotted over Hawaii turned out to be Chinese satellite, experts say
Remember that curtain of glowing green lasers that floated across Hawaii’s night sky last month?
At the time, scientists believed the lights came from one of NASA’s remote-sensing lasers from the ICESat-2/43613 satellite, McClatchy News previously reported. But it turns out the display likely came from a Chinese satellite.
The light display was captured early in the morning Saturday, Jan. 28, by the Subaru-Asahi Star Camera, and scientists posted the short clip on YouTube later that day, McClatchy News previously reported.
On Feb. 6, however, they corrected themselves and said the lights weren’t from the NASA satellite.
“According to Dr. Martino, Anthony J., a NASA scientist working on ICESat-2 ATLAS, it is not by their instrument but by others,” the correction says. “His colleagues, Dr. Alvaro Ivanoff et al., did a simulation of the trajectory of satellites that have a similar instrument and found a most likely candidate as the ACDL instrument by the Chinese Daqi-1/AEMS satellite. We really appreciate their efforts in the identification of the light. We are sorry about our confusion related to this event and its potential impact on the ICESat-2 team.”
Those who commented on the post seemed unfazed, joking that the lasers were actually a portal, a boundary or code straight out of the science-fiction movie franchise “The Matrix.”
“That’s the out of bounds wall,” someone shared.
“I remember the matrix upgrade from Jan 28th. It was wild,” someone else said.
A few people also seemed to think the green lights resembled a bar code.
“I think we just got bar code scanned by aliens,” someone else said. “I wonder how much we cost.”
The lasers come from altimeters, which can “measure glacier height, sea ice, forests, lakes,” and other features on Earth, McClatchy News previously reported.
This story was originally published February 14, 2023 at 12:40 PM with the headline "Freaky green lights spotted over Hawaii turned out to be Chinese satellite, experts say."
