The strangest things always happen in the skies over Hawaii. First this spiral and now a wall of lasers. Observed on Jan. 28 by the Subaru-Asahi camera, which streams the night sky from the Big Island’s Mauna Kea volcano, the show appears to be the work of NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite 2.
The ICESat-2 satellite thanks to its ultra-sensitive lasers it is able to detect tiny details on our planet. We are talking, for example, of the thickness of the ice on the Arctic sea, which is getting thinner and thinner, and helps scientists to understand how fast the man-made climate change is ruining our planet.
ICESat-2’s mission is to carry out a “comprehensive measurement of the Earth’s surface” and map the surface “in fantastic three-dimensional detail”. On board the device has a single instrument: the advanced topographic laser altimetercalled ATLAS, which caused the “wall of lasers” that was noticed streaming.
Definitely a very particular and strange effect – you can see the video of the phenomenon at the bottom of the news – which could easily give you a good scare. These peculiar effects in the night sky are not new… e some are even stranger and difficult to explain: for example, what are these columns of light above the Russian skies?
