Strange Skies
The Facebook page "Youth for Mindoro" has shared the amazing photos of a strange cloud formation in Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro. The phenomenon happened last Wednesday afternoon (April 14, 2021).
According to the witnesses, the mysterious light has been formed above the clouds. The weird light looks like a crown roaring above the cloudy, which garnered various reactions from the social media users.

The new bright nova, V1710 Scorpii, glows conspicuously red in this photo taken on April 14, 2021. It's the third nova discovered in recent weeks that has reached 9th magnitude or brighter.
Amateur astronomer Paul Camilleri of Northern Territory, Australia and the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) independently discovered the new object early on April 12th at visual magnitude 9.5. Formally named V1710 Scorpii, it brightened quickly to 8.5 before fading slightly, now simmering around 9.5 as of early April 15th. Oscillations like these are common, so the nova might continue to fade or re-brighten just as suddenly.
In an email, Camilleri shared a happy coincidence: "Interestingly, this discovery is my 10th nova, and it was found 30 years to the day of my first discovery in April 1991 and a few days short of my last discovery (April 14, 1993) some 28 years ago."

This is Paul Camilleri's discovery image taken on April 12.7625 UT with a Nikon D3200 DSLR and 85mm f/2 lens. The exposure was five seconds at ISO 6400. Since it was made on a tripod without a tracking mount, the stars are slightly trailed.
Stacking of 20 unfiltered exposures, 120 seconds each, obtained remotely on 2021, April 02.1 from Z08 (Telescope Live, Oria) through a 0.7 m f/8 Ritchey Chretien + CCD, shows that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 15" arcsec in diameter (Observers E. Guido, M. Rocchetto, E. Bryssinck, M. Fulle, G. Milani, C. Nassef, G. Savini, A. Valvasori).
Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version; made with TYCHO software by D. Parrott)
This transient has been discovered by Andrew Pearce at 8.4 mag (unfiltered) on 2021-04-04.825 UT using a Canon 1100D DSLR camera with a 100mm f/2.8 lens. Total exposure time was 20 seconds (2 x 10s images stacked). Rob McNaught reported non-detection on 2021-04-02.776 UT (unfiltered limiting mag 11.0).
On images taken on April 06.40, 2021 we can confirm the presence of an optical counterpart with B-filtered CCD magnitude +8.955 (R-filtered & V-filtered images were saturated in 5-second exposures) at coordinates:
R.A. = 17 58 16.08, Decl.= -29 14 56.4
(equinox 2000.0; Gaia DR2 catalogue reference stars for the astrometry).
Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version):

Ultra high-energy diffuse gamma rays (yellow points) are distributed along the Milky Way Galaxy. The gray shaded area indicates the area outside the detectors' field of view.
The distribution of cosmic rays by energy suggests these particles come in two varieties. The most extreme ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are believed to come from remote galaxies (see the May 2021 issue of Sky & Telescope to learn more about these harbingers). But the majority of cosmic rays, with energies below 4 PeV, are thought to originate in the Milky Way. However, the true nature of the PeVatron particle accelerators has remained unknown, largely because the paths of cosmic rays are bent by galactic magnetic fields, so they do not "point back" to their origin.
A large team of Chinese and Japanese scientists known as the Tibet ASγ Collaboration has now detected a few dozen very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays from the Milky Way that aren't associated with known sources. These gamma rays, collected between 2014 and 2017, are thought to be produced when cosmic rays slam into atomic nuclei in the interstellar medium. Theory says they carry about 10% of the original cosmic-ray energy. The most energetic one detected by the Tibet ASγ team packs a punch of 0.957 PeV - an all-time record.
Now, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have identified the clearest case to date of a supermassive black hole in motion. Their results are published today in The Astrophysical Journal.
"We don't expect the majority of supermassive black holes to be moving; they're usually content to just sit around," says Dominic Pesce, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics who led the study. "They're just so heavy that it's tough to get them going. Consider how much more difficult it is to kick a bowling ball into motion than it is to kick a soccer ball — realizing that in this case, the 'bowling ball' is several million times the mass of our Sun. That's going to require a pretty mighty kick."
Pesce and his collaborators have been working to observe this rare occurrence for the last five years by comparing the velocities of supermassive black holes and galaxies.
"We asked: Are the velocities of the black holes the same as the velocities of the galaxies they reside in?" he explains. "We expect them to have the same velocity. If they don't, that implies the black hole has been disturbed."
For their search, the team initially surveyed 10 distant galaxies and the supermassive black holes at their cores. They specifically studied black holes that contained water within their accretion disks — the spiral structures that spin inward towards the black hole.
Our cooling atmosphere: Curious circular clouds appear over Swiss Alps alongside an iridescent cloud
Comment: There are scientific explanations for how these kinds of clouds form, but what is notable is that they're not a common sight and their appearance points to an atmosphere that is undergoing significant cooling; and this is just one of an increasing number of examples.
How did these eerie cylindrical clouds formed in the sky over the Eiger in the Swiss Alps? via
The eerie sky formation hovered over the Eiger, a 3,967-metre (13,015 ft) mountain of the Bernese Alps.
This picture shows the two mysterious cylindrical clouds in the sky over the Swiss Alps on March 10, 2021. via 20min.ch
Comment: See also:
- Chemtrails? Contrails? Strange Skies
- Stunning iridescent clouds snapped above skies of Siberia's Belukha mountain
- Strange but beautiful skies: Noctilucent 'tornado' cloud, auroras, double and twin rainbow plus a midnight rainbow
- Melting icebergs key feature of an ice age, scientists find
- NASA: Recent "Greening Earth" has had strong cooling effect on land
Rayann Elzein sends this picture from Utsjoki in the Finnish Lapland. "The red auroras looked pale white to my unaided eye, but a quick exposure with my camera revealed their true color."
What's so tricky about red? The action, if you can call it that, takes place more than 150 km above Earth's surface. At that high altitude, oxygen atoms excited by solar wind slowly spit out red photons. Emphasis on slowly. The radiative lifetime of the transition is 110 seconds--an eternity at the quantum scale. The atoms must remain undisturbed that long to produce their red light.
Perhaps that's why red auroras often appear when conditions are quiet. "The solar wind speed last night was quite low and there was no expectation of a geomagnetic storm," says Elzein. Tonight is expected to be quiet as well. Red auroras, anyone?
Comment: In October last year the same Arctic photographer captured red auroras over Utsjoki, Finland saying, "Rarely have I seen anything like this before."
With the surge in sightings of rare or novel atmospheric phenomena in recent years it seems the electrical nature of our weather and changing atmosphere is becoming more apparent:
- Novel atmosphere phenomenon 'STEVE' makes ANOTHER appearance over Finland
- Very rare noctilucent clouds appear over Argentina
- Rare Type II Gigantic Jet event recorded over Tropical Storm Laura
- Recently discovered atmospheric electrical phenomenon 'Green Ghost' captured over West Texas
- Extremely bright 'jellyfish' sprites easily visible with naked-eye over Colorado
- Changing atmosphere: Red sprites and a blue jet seen above Europe's stormy skies

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory captured a supernova remnant called Sagittarius A East (Sgr A East) near the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
Supernovas are stellar explosions that seed the galaxy with elements vital for life. Sagittarius A East (or Sgr A East) is a supernova remnant that lies near Sagittarius A* — the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. This supernova remnant is the first known example in our own Milky Way galaxy of an unusual type of white dwarf stellar explosion called a Type Iax supernova, according to a statement from the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
"While we've found Type Iax supernovae in other galaxies, we haven't identified evidence for one in the Milky Way until now," Ping Zhou, lead author of the study from Nanjing University in China, said in the statement. "This discovery is important for getting a handle of the myriad ways white dwarfs explode."

An optical illusion caused the ship to appear as though it was hovering above the horizon
David Morris took a photo of the ship near Falmouth, Cornwall.
BBC meteorologist David Braine said the "superior mirage" occurred because of "special atmospheric conditions that bend light".
He said the illusion is common in the Arctic, but can appear "very rarely" in the UK during winter.
Comment: It's possible that this is yet another sign of the increasingly cooler conditions on our planet:
- Brocken spectre: Rare weather phenomenon captured on film by walker in Wales
- Stunning iridescent clouds snapped above skies of Siberia's Belukha mountain
- Rare green flash sunset photographed flickering into even rarer blue in Norway
- Fata Morgana? 'Ghost City' mirage filmed over lake in China
Comment: It is likely that atmospheric dust loading from increased comet and volcanic activity is contributing to the 'strange skies' we are witnessing, the cooling effect of which causes ice crystals to form. See also: