Light from Navy test fire courses across the Southern California and Arizona sky

[relin]

From the LA Times:

Navy Strategic Systems Programs conducted scheduled Trident II (D5) missile test flight at sea from USS Kentucky, an Ohio Class SSBN, in the Pacific Test Range off the coast of Southern California, according to a statement from the Pentagon.

Saw this on the way to dinner tonight. First live launch of anything I've been able to see, so I thought I'd share to see if anyone else spotted it.

[mythbusters844]

Saw it too. I was hiking and saw an orange light, and thought it was a plane at first. Then, I realized that it was going much too fast to be a plane, and after it started making a long orange flame, I realized that it was a rocket launch and started freaking out. I watched as it got higher and higher, and saw a bright flash and a piece fall off when it presumably staged. I kept watching as it got high enough for the exhaust to be lit by the sun, when it made a massive white plume that took up the entire sky. It then made a shockwave as the second stage possibly separated and the third stage ignited and continued on, still making the plume. I took a (bad) picture of it:

I'd never even anticipated seeing anything like this at all, ever. Even the launches I've seen from Vandenberg came nothing close to this one, even though those were ones I knew about beforehand, and not a complete surprise like this one. It was probably the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Edited November 8, 2015 by mythbusters844

[Motokid600]

It's a UFO. Apparently.

Or a rocket being lit up by the sun and staging, but you know...

Edited November 8, 2015 by Motokid600

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I saw that. I thought it might be a Taurid, but I recently heard it was a submarine based rocket.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/nov/07/mystery-light-sky-military-navy-drill/

[Mazon Del]

Here is a much better video of most of the thing.

There was a reddit analysis discussing what is happening. In short, each time you see the jets fire midway through the video in a spiral pattern, that is the final stage vehicle deploying a dummy warhead on its own path.

[Razor235]

It's a UFO. Apparently.

It was an object, which the person viewing couldn't identify, flying.

Sounds like a UFO to me.

[lajoswinkler]

It was an object, which the person viewing couldn't identify, flying.

Sounds like a UFO to me.

No, UFO is something that officially wasn't recognized. When common peasants can't recognize a flying object, it's called ignorance. When nobody can explain it, it's called an UFO.

I don't understand, it's like there's a huge stockpile of people not seeing these failed rocket launches on YT (which have ungodly amount of total combined views) that always emerges and screams BS.

We live in a modern world where lots of crap is flying overhead and people still can't get used to it. It's so depressing to realize how ignorant the bulk of the civilization actually is, even with their high tech gadgets and access to the World Wide Web.