An unexpected G2-class geomagnetic storm occurred during the early hours of May 17th, sparked by the glancing blow of a Coronal Mass Ejection. Originally expected to miss Earth, the CME was launched on May 12th by an erupting magnetic filament in the sun’s northern hemisphere.
During the May 17th storm, auroras appeared as far south as New Mexico where I captured a time-lapse of it. I was given a last minute ‘Heads Up” by my good friend Mike Lewinski that there might be an Aurora display, and it was a good thing that I put out a camera.
Beside the aurora there was also something more. Saturday morning my socials blew up about a strange white plume that moved across the sky around midnight of the 16th, Many observers at first thought it might be a strange form of an atmospheric phenomenon known as a STEVE. When I looked at my images that I had captured, I surmised that it was most likely either a rocket launch or re-entry. We believe it is related to a rocket launch in China. About an hour before the plume appeared (5:39 UTC), Chinese launch startup Landspace launched the ZhuQue-2E rocketfrom the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (4:12 UTC). The white streak may have been a de-orbit burn, or perhaps a circularization burn for the deploying satellites.
ZhuQue-2E is a new type of rocket powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. This “methalox” technology was developed by Landspace, and their ZhuQue-2