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Aliens!

Well, no, actually this was the NASA Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment, or AZURE (get it?) intended to study the interaction of charged particles in the Earth’s ionosphere.

From the Express:

Two rockets were launched from the Andøya Space Center in northern Norway. They measured the temperature and atmospheric density and deployed tracers including trimethylaluminum and a barium and strontium mixture, which ionizes when exposed to sunlight.

These mixtures create colourful clouds that allow researchers to track the flow of neutral and charged particles, respectively,” NASA explained last year, adding that its tracers would “pose no hazard to residents in the region.”

From another source:

These mixtures, using substances similar to those found in fireworks, created colorful clouds that allow the researchers to track the flow of neutral and charged particles with the auroral wind.

“By tracking the movement of these colorful clouds via ground-based photography and triangulating their moment-by-moment position in 3D, AZURE will provide valuable data on the vertical and horizontal flow of particles in two key regions of the ionosphere over a range of different altitudes,” the scientists said.

It certainly created a light show that had some of the locals confused. This fellow had a nice 4K camera all ready to go and got some excellent video of it:

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