Space & Astronomy

Mystery of weird green lasers over Hawaii has now been solved

By T.K. Randall
February 13, 2023 ·  14 comments

The lasers provided quite the spectacle. Image Credit: YouTube / SubaruTel_StarCamAdmin The phenomenon first came to light when footage recorded by a camera at an observatory atop Hawaii's tallest peak was published on social media.

At the time, Japanese scientists at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) believed that the laser beams were being produced by NASA's orbiting ICESat-2 satellite which is used to monitor the levels of sea ice in connection with global warming.

Earlier this month, however, NASA scientist Dr. Martino, Anthony J - who has worked on the probe - played down this suggestion, instead implying that the lasers must have come from something else."His colleagues, Dr. Alvaro Ivanoff et al., did a simulation of the trajectory of satellites that have a similar instrument and found a most likely candidate as the ACDL instrument by the Chinese Daqi-1/AEMS satellite," the Japanese scientists wrote.

"We really appreciate their efforts in the identification of the light. We are sorry about our confusion related to this event and its potential impact on the ICESat-2 team."

Having launched in April last year, China's Daqi-1 satellite performs a very similar function to NASA's satellite and uses LIDAR (which utilizes lasers) to monitor global carbon and pollution levels.

You can check out the footage captured of the lasers below.


Source: Science Alert | Comments (14)

Tags: Lasers, Hawaii