Strange lights have been spotted near the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka (image by Dutch pilot JPC van Heijst). The sighting was made by pilots flying from Hong Kong to Alaska. The glow came about 20 minutes after a vertical lightning bolt was seen
* The sighting was made by pilots flying from Hong Kong to Alaska
* The glow came about 20 minutes after a vertical lightning bolt was seen
* Dutch pilot van Heijst ruled out squid-fishing-boats as the origin
* He says the cause may have been an underwater volcano
* An ongoing investigation is taking place to find out what happened
A pilot and his co-pilot have spotted a mysterious orange and red glow over the Pacific Ocean.
The strange lights were spotted south of the Russian peninsula Kamchatka during the flight of a Boeing 747-8 from Hong Kong to Anchorage, Alaska.
And while no explanation has yet been given, it's thought that they may have originated from the explosion of a huge volcano under the surface of the ocean.
Comment: Note that the pilots saw "an intense flash of light like a lightning bolt, directed vertically up in the distance". While there was no thunderstorm in the area, this does not preclude some form of electrical discharge event, which can and have occurred in virtually cloudless skies. A photo of a 'blue jet', or sprite, was photographed above Australia a few days later.
What could the red blobs be then?
Note that they occurred at the same time as the string of strong earthquakes hit the western side of the Americas (California, Peru, and Chile, on August 24th). So these lights may be another form of 'earthquake lights' that appear with episodes of subterranean stress, pockets of illuminated plasma between charged layers of the atmosphere.