Quote:
Originally Posted by HPLovecraft
It's hard to fathom this being a ballistic missile just going haywire... But, then, I don't know enough about ballistic missiles to call the Russians on making crap up, either. It just looks like something from a sci-fi movie. I woulda peed myself if I had seen it. The tail looks pretty weird considering it all of a sudden just starts to spiral in what looks like a perfect circle. Not sure why the tail leads to the center when the spiral is vastly larger than that.
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Both of those photos are long exposures, so you're seeing the whole event in one frame. Also, the object is at high enough altitude (and the angle of the sun is so low at that latitude) that it's picking up a bit of sunlight, so it's more illuminated than you'd expect. The blue corkscrew is the propellant ejecta as the missile reaches altitude while spinning slightly. Once it reaches altitude, it started spinning on an axis that had it pretty much perpendicular to the viewers. With each rotation it spewed out more fuel, which was caught in the sunlight and led to the spiral shape. When it ran out of fuel, the last rings of illuminated material slowly dissipate, leaving the black hole in the center.
Seems a perfectly reasonable explanation to me.
There's additional
video out of Russia of a similar incident a day later that clearly shows the rocket. The Russians are now claiming that the spinning is intentional as they are testing the stabilization systems on the rocket. I don't know if I fully buy that, but they've got to spin it.