Aurora accompanied by 'White Streak'

4 months ago
32

Boulder Valley, Montana. Overnight, May 16th into the 17th, 2025.

Although it was raining at the time, there was an alert for possible G2 storms overnight, with the weather moderating to partly cloudy, so I set out the tripod with my GoPro Hero9 to see if I would be lucky enough to catch anything on video.
To my great surprise, although there were lots of clouds, there was aurora color, and an immense white streak shooting down from the sky to the Earth. I thought at first it was STEVE, but others online have suggested a Chinese rocket launch might be the cause. Not the exhaust, but perhaps a LOX dump from the 2nd stage? Because the streak doesn't go skyward, but comes down. Don't expect me to figure it out, I'm no rocket scientist, hah.
Clouds mostly obscured the aurora, although after the initial storming arrived with 'the streak' it was mostly a green glow below the cloud cover. More aurora pillars do appear later, before the early light of dawn comes into the skies, but they are faint due to the brightening skies of dawn.

Video processed in VideoProc Vlogger freeware.

Background audio is "Calm Horizon" by AMBINET, courtesy of www.pixabay.com

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