Sudden Astro Appearance Amazes the Unwitting

For a spectacular moment, a mysterious glow shot through the night sky to the amazement of those who happened to look up at the right time. That time was a bit after 7 p.m. Monday.

“My wife and I were sitting in the cockpit of our boat” in Charlotte Amalie Harbor, Kirk McGeorge said. “Cindy (Laye) saw it first, coming over the mountain. I grabbed my camera.”

McGeorge got a shot of the unexpected phenomenon, which he shared on social media; numerous V.I. residents chimed in with accounts of their own sightings. There were also reports of viewings from various islands in the Caribbean.

“I knew what it was because I used to live in Florida,” McGeorge said. Although this was the first time he’d actually seen it, he was familiar with the concept. It was the plasma trail of a rocket.

At 6:13 p.m. EST (7:13 p.m. in the Virgin Islands) the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink 6-1 mission launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It had been scheduled for lift-off about five hours earlier but was delayed to wait for a solar storm to pass.

The rocket was used to carry a satellite into space as part of the vast Starlink broadband communications system SpaceX is expanding.

The launch was not secret; it was covered live and can be watched via a Youtube video. However, the company, famously owned by billionaire Elon Musk, didn’t alert the public in all the areas where the rocket might have been viewed.