Red light in the sky at night

‘Bizarre’ pink lights seen in the sky above Victorian town of Mildura were not an alien invasion after all

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Tammy Szumowski, who said she ‘didn’t know what was going on’ took the pictures of the pink glow in the sky emanating from a medicinal marijuana facility. Photograph: Tammy Szumowsk

Caitlin Cassidy

An alien invasion? Season five of Stranger Things? A portal to the timespace continuum?

Residents in the northern Victorian town of Mildura were left pleasantly dumbfounded on Wednesday evening when the night sky was set ablaze with an eerie pink glow.

“It was very bizarre,” said Tammy Szumowski.

“I was on the phone to my mum, and my dad was saying the world was ending.”

But the explanation was far more mundane. Pharmaceutical company Cann Group confirmed the lights were coming from its local medicinal cannabis facility, where the blackout blinds had been left open.

“Cannabis plants require different spectrums of light in order to encourage their growth,” said Rhys Cohen, senior communications manager at Cann Group Ltd.

“A red spectrum light is often used. Normally the facility would have blackout blinds that come down at night, and will in the future block that glow.”

The federal member for Mallee, Dr Anne Webster, was driving home in the dark when she noticed the smouldering pink light.

‘It’s mind-boggling’: the complex, and growing, use of medicinal cannabis in Australia

Read more

“I thought that is weird. There is no city out there … What is it?” she said.

“When I understood the Cann processing site is there – but it still was the first time I’ve seen that pink glow. It was quite strange.”

Cann Group Ltd was the first Australian company to secure licences for cannabis cultivation for medicinal and research purposes.

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On 7 July, its Mildura facility received its GMP licence to cultivate and supply a wide range of medicinal cannabis products in-house after acquiring the site in 2019. It gathered its first commercial harvest of crops in June.

Webster said it was “quite an exciting site”. Due to the nature of its business, however, it has a secret location and isn’t open to the public.

“Propagation of cannabis is really interesting and the way they use lights … to increase the growth cycle and speed up the whole process is quite amazing,” she said.

“I look forward to many other innovative producers coming to the region and bringing their glows with them.”

Across Mildura and surrounding towns, people flocked to their backyards and front porches to photograph the spectral glow.

Alexandra Talent’s husband was feeding the horses when he noticed they were “a little distracted” on Wednesday evening.

“The kids’ imaginations went wild and of course the topic of aliens was presented.

“My husband and I were a bit more optimistic.”

Red Cliffs resident Andrew Kynaston was on the way home from getting his Covid booster with his wife at about 6.30pm when they spotted the lights.

“It looked pretty and strange,” he said.

Kynaston is used to looking at sunsets but he said he’d never seen a view quite like it.

“I pinched my wife’s phone and took a couple of pictures,” he said. “It was around 6.30 when I saw it and thought maybe it was some kind of deflection at first.

This evening, check out one of the flashiest stars in the sky. It’s so bright that every year in northern autumn, we get questions from people in the Northern Hemisphere who see a star twinkling with colorful flashes. It lies low in the northeastern sky at nightfall or early evening as seen from mid-northern locations. That star is Capella. The reason it’s so flashy is because it’s a bright star shining near the horizon, its light coming to us through our thick atmosphere. The wavering air makes its point of light jump around, split into colors and appear to flash.

If you could travel to it in space, you’d find that Capella is really two golden stars, both with roughly the same surface temperature as our local star, the sun … but both larger and brighter than our sun.

Capella is in the constellation Auriga the Charioteer. Since antiquity, Capella’s nickname has been the Goat Star. You might pick it out just by gazing northeastward from a Northern Hemisphere latitude during the evening hours in October. Capella climbs upward through the night, and this month soars high overhead in the wee hours before dawn.

Why stars twinkle or flash

So, Capella is a golden point of light that flashes red and green when it’s low in the sky. Why does it do that?

The reality is that every star in the sky undergoes the same process as Capella when it twinkles. That is, every star’s light must shine through Earth’s atmosphere before reaching our eyes. But not every star flashes as noticeably as Capella. The flashes happen because Capella is low in the sky in the evening at this time of year. And, when you look at an object low in the sky, you’re looking through more atmosphere than when the same object is overhead.

The atmosphere splits or refracts the star’s light, just as a prism splits sunlight.

So that’s where Capella’s red and green flashes are coming from – not from the star itself – but from the refraction of its light by our atmosphere. When you see Capella higher in the sky, you’ll find that these glints of color will disappear.

By the way, why are these flashes of color so noticeable with Capella? The reason is simply that it’s a bright star. It’s the sixth brightest star in Earth’s sky, not including our sun.

Here are 2 other flashing stars of autumn

If the flashy star you’re seeing doesn’t seem to be Capella (wrong time, wrong location?), here are a couple other options. Arcturus is in the northwest at this time of year. Follow the curving handle of the Big Dipper toward the horizon, and if it hits the star you’re wondering about, then you’re looking at Arcturus in Boötes.

Another option is Sirius. If you’re waking before dawn this time of year, you’ll find Sirius toward the south. Check out the maps below to see which star is twinkling at you.

Bottom line: If you’re in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere and see a bright star twinkling with red and green flashes low in the northeast on October evenings, it’s probably Capella.

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October 7, 2022

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Deborah Byrd

About the Author:

Deborah Byrd created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Today, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of this website. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. "Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers," she says.

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