On Arab social media, pictures of a strange cloud, swollen in a part of it and a shiny on the other side, coincided with the successive Iranian ballistic missile launchers on Israel during the past days.
Some thought that this is the missile itself, but it is an effect related to the exhaust gas out of the missile engines in the upper atmosphere.
In these layers, the density of the atmosphere is weak, which allows the exhaust to expand in the form of a huge cloud, and produces, which produces transparent luminous shapes that resemble a jellyfish or a large smoke flower in the sky, and therefore it is sometimes called the “jellyfish effect”.
Rocket clouds
This shape usually appears when the missile is launched before dawn or after sunset, that is, when the Earth is dark, but the upper layers of the atmosphere are still lit by the sun.
This is similar to what happens when you see a plane in the sky after sunset, but it reflects the sunlight, although the sun was descended under the horizon for you, and this happens because the sun lights up the plane from the bottom of the horizon.
This shape is affected by several factors, including the high speed of the missile and the angle of sunlight at dawn or sunset.
This phenomenon is not dangerous, it is only a visual phenomenon, it has no negative impact on those who see it, this comes in the context that these phenomena occur at high altitudes (dozens of kilometers) and are usually very far from you, but you see them because of their height, and the reason for the height is related to the nature of the ballistic missiles themselves.
The ballistic missiles are defined as those missiles that take a ballistic path to deliver a head or warheads to a pre -determined target, a curved path that resembles a huge arc in advance from the moment the missile launch.
It starts to run the missile with an engine that pushes it to the upper atmosphere or even to space, then the missile deviates in a equivalent path, returns to the Earth, lands towards the target, guided by gravity.
Colorful balls
Indeed, this is not the first time that strange phenomena have been monitored in the sky in conjunction with Iranian ballistic missiles. For example, in several Arab countries, colored balls shining in red and blue in the sky at dawn.
This phenomenon occurs when these missiles are breathed or burned, these residue expands and expands quickly in the form of a large cloud, and the components of these residue reflect the fuel from sunlight coming from below, to give a red or blue color according to their chemical components.
Likewise, this happens in the upper atmosphere, and then we can see it at a distance from the main event area, during the fall of the missiles towards Israel.
And strange withdrawal
Some may notice strange clouds luminous at dawn, called “luminous night clouds”, and usually arises in the upper atmosphere at the height of dozens of kilometers, and because it is high, the sun lights it before the sunrise in the aforementioned way.
These clouds appear naturally in several regions around the world, but this time it is artificial clouds, caused by the outputs and ignition of the ballistic missiles launched by Iran towards Israel, and its interceptions, which we can see at great distances from the place of their occurrence due to their large altitudes as we mentioned above.
Scientists are interested in studying this type of clouds. For example, on January 26, 2018, NASA launched a small research missile from Alaska in the winter – which is a time when these clouds do not usually appear – and this missile launched about 220 kilograms of water vapor at a height of about 85 km above the surface of the earth (in the mesophir layer).
In just 18 seconds, the ground measurement devices were monitored to form an industrial illuminated night cloud. This cloud was seen moving from a height of 92 km to about 78 km within minutes.