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New York Sky Turns Bright Blue After Transformer Explosion
- henkdevries 8y agoTitle made me think of a Marvell movie...
- em-bee 8y agoi was expecting some kind of movie promotion...
- Fezzik 8y agoI wonder how often these occur. When I was in my early 20s a buddy and I were about 18 hours in to a drive to Buena Vista, CO from Portland, OR, when a transformer exploded somewhere near us in a huge canyon. We thought it was noiseless nucleur explosion - the light was searingly bright and seemed to engulf everything. I just happened to call another friend (from a pay phone!) who had experienced the same thing. Even in my sleep deprived state it is to-this-day one of the most visceral moments of my life.
- JimboOmega 8y agoArc flash is a pretty amazing thing. And literally blindingly bright.
- mirimir 8y agoEven a little utility pole transformer can put on quite the show. Years ago, I saw one where the the transformer itself got ~vaporized. And then the arc started walking down the pole. Maybe the pole was old enough that it had some long cracks, that were damp enough to conduct well. Pretty soon, the entire pole was carbonized, and there was arcing all the way from the kV lines to the ground. After a couple hours, they isolated the circuit, and shut it down.
- jeffwass 8y agoThis happened to me once on a small street in Massachusetts. I was driving at night and suddenly my heart jumped as a helicopter suddenly shined its bright spotlight straight at my car, like in the movies. It was hovering 20 feet off the ground about 200 feet away, and pointing straight at me. After a second or two I realised the ‘helicopter’ was just my brain’s initial attempt to interpret what I was seeing. There was no helicopter, it was a transformer at the top of a pole that exploded. The “spotlight” was not focused in any one direction but shining in all directions equally, so it was damn bright. You hardly ever see anything so bright, which was why the “spotlight” thing made sense to my brain at first. And “helicopter” since it was up in the air. It stayed lit for only a couple seconds and then the street plunged into darkness, all street lights off, as a few errant will-o-wisps sputtered out of the remains of the transformer.
- refurb 8y agoI had this happen while working from home in SF. My office window faces the backyard and a transformer in front of my neighbors house went up. No light show that I could see as it was early afternoon, but holy crap did the noise ever scare me. The window was open and it made this incredibly loud Bzzzzzz for about 10 seconds, then a small explosion. Took my brain about 20 seconds to connect the dots. See the smoking transformer helped.
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoWhen I was in college, I was leaning on the guy wire of a wooden power pole while chatting with a friend. I was rocking a bit, as I tend to do when standing still, and I noticed that the pole was swaying just a little too. So I tried bouncing the wire some more, and got several inches of sway out of the pole. Neat! Then there was a loud POP and all the lights on the street went out. Not sure what happened next, as it seemed like a good time to leave. Moral: don't do that.
- lb1lf 8y agoI work on medium-sized power electric systems (mostly in the few hundred kW-range), and have a strong aversion to being anywhere near our systems during first power-up. Hence, I always carry a couple of pushbuttons and some 15m of cable in my toolkit - wiring them in parallel with the buttons normally starting the show, retreating, saying a brief prayer to the patron saint of electricians and starting up. Did a system on a ship a few years ago, all set, me sitting in the corridor outside the drive suite and pressing the button closing the main contactor, only to be greeted by the tell-tale sound of a door being blown off its hinges and an arc forming. Oh. Cue incredible light show on the bulkhead opposite the drive suite door; after a second of this, I come to my senses and figure the so-called arc safe contactor -well- isn't. I push the button jury-rigged to cut power at the generator end, only to have nothing whatsoever happen. Oh oh. Still arcing. I key my VHF to alert the engine room to kill the generator set and alert them to the fire getting started in the drive suite, only to be told in no uncertain terms to keep quiet as they were busy with an emergency. Seconds later, ship goes black (and eerily quiet!) before the sound of boots running down the corridor as the emergency lights kick in. I've never felt as relieved as I did when the firefighting crew later told me that I'd been most unlucky - a pump starter in the drive suite (not our delivery) had opted out of existence and had sooted down all of my precious kit. It had blown up the very same moment I tried to start my equipment for the first time - and for a few minutes I was certain I had contributed to taking an investment in the several hundred million dollar range off-hire for however long it took to replace the damaged electronics. Instead, the crew apologised profusely for having me come all the way to the wrong side of the planet only to see my delivery go up in flames not of my own making. Priceless. I'll remember the sound, the light and the smell - not to mention that sinking feeling - to the end of my days, though.
- joezydeco 8y agoI live in an older subdivision that has 18kW transformers on poles every hundred yards or so. We get a blowout once or twice a year during a storm. The arcs are smaller but oh man that 60Hz hum. It’s incredibly loud. Can’t imagine how loud that NYC arc was.
- anigbrowl 8y agoIs this light in the sky a reflection (as on water vapor/smog) of what is happening at ground level?
- rdiddly 8y agoYes, when a transformer fails spectacularly like this, there's often an electrical arc for a brief time, which is typically about as bright as lightning.
- mirimir 8y agoIt's often not a brief time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x87WuJgoqlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x87WuJgoqlQ
- spdustin 8y agoIt was likely the electrical discharge through the nitrogen in the air (guessing arc discharge in this case); it ionizes the nitrogen, which emits blue light when it's subsequently de-ionized.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- menzoic 8y agoThis happens in Nigeria a lot (><) I hear and see a transformer explode multiple times per week.
- CompuHacker 8y agoWhat is the cause?
- jacquesm 8y agoCould be any number of causes: - overload + faulty breakers (or no breakers...) - old age insulation failure - coolant depletion - overvoltage due to lightning strikes elsewhere
- jdietrich 8y agoTheft, mainly. A transformer is a big lump of copper, but even the oil is meaningfully valuable in a low-income country. There are reports of widespread transformer oil theft across Africa and South-East Asia. Draining a transformer of oil is easy, it'll earn you a few naira and it'll inevitably lead to the transformer burning itself out in spectacular fashion. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/12/thieves-fry-kenya-power-grid-fast-food-2014122884728785480.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/12/thieves-f... http://www.eskom.co.za/AboutElectricity/PubSafety/Pages/Transformer.aspx http://www.eskom.co.za/AboutElectricity/PubSafety/Pages/Tran... https://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/kerala/theft-of-oil-from-transformers-electricity-department-in-shock--1.3050138 https://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/kerala/theft-of-oil-fro...
- robocat 8y agoJeepers - they use the stolen oil to deep fry food! Why don't they add some things to: (a) make it taste horrid, (b) make it smell horrendous when burnt?
- reustle 8y agoHere's a video I took https://twitter.com/reustle/status/1078476019051446273 https://twitter.com/reustle/status/1078476019051446273 Felt like fireworks without the sound
- Taniwha 8y agobest twitter comment I've seen is "these gender reveal events are really getting out of hand"
- Axsuul 8y agoCloverfield feels anyone?
- miiiiiike 8y agoI live about two blocks away. The lights dimmed and one of our breakers flipped. Then it got bad. My phone suddenly lit up, brighter than the night's electric blue sky, as everyone I've ever known called and texted to ask about what was going on. Nothing interesting. Astoria is a pretty great neighborhood tho. We have a 24-hour fruit market next to another 24-hour fruit market.
- ars 8y agoThat's interesting. What would make the breaker trip? Was it a regular overcurrent breaker, or some other kind?
- epse 8y agoResettable breakers (partially) work on magnetic fields, so in theory a power surge at a transformer (massive coils) could generate a strong enough field. Just a guess
- ars 8y agoMagnetic fields fall by distance to the 4th power (more or less) and are effectively zero at distances greater than double the size of the magnet (the pole separation). I.e. unless that transformer was stupendously large there's no way the magnetic field would reach a home 2 blocks away. But I appreciate you at least trying to answer, so thanks.
- snowwindwaves 8y agoA load could draw more current when the voltage sags and therefore trip. Like a fan on a motor that rotates at a fixed speed. Or a pump.
- InclinedPlane 8y agoWhat's the difference between the fruit stores? Is one better than the other or are they not directly comparable?
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- antome 8y agoHere's a pretty good view from above, from reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/aa632d/massive_new_york_city_electrical_fire_at_astoria/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/aa632...
- groestl 8y agoI think the battle is lost, but I'm a little bit sad seeing the sky over a city being filmed in vertical video.
- opless 8y agoThough it makes sense if you're watching it on your phone maximised in its natural orientation.
- abainbridge 8y agoWe should just make phones square.
- foobar1962 8y agoOr make the sensor square and have it record full-sensor so the image can be rotes in post processing.
- kw71 8y agoNo, we should have the phones deliver electric shocks whenever taking video in portrait mode.
- pmontra 8y agoProbably who records videos just pick up the phone, portrait mode, and start filming. No thoughts about the circumstances of watching it later on.
- mrfusion 8y agoHere’s a PSA for you: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA
- ggm 8y agoWhat happens to the fluids in the transformer? PCB breaks down in very high heat, into much more benign things. Hopefully a long persistent arc helps make conditions right to get rid of a lot of it. Otherwise.. it's a nasty contaminated site. Be kind rewind...
- eigenvector 8y agoNowadays, large power transformers like those that would be found in a generating station or large substation are surrounded by an oil containment pit to prevent release of oil directly to the environment.
- djohnston 8y ago“No injuries, no fire, no evidence of extraterrestrial activity,” made me chuckle
- AznHisoka 8y agoI hope the mention of extraterresterial wasnt tongue in cheek though. Because it might be a legitimate threat someday.
- macintux 8y agoIt’s hard to imagine a scenario where ET arrives and is both threatening and something we can defend against. I imagine when the aliens arrive we’ll be so far behind the technology curve that there’s not much point in trying to defend ourselves.
- djohnston 8y agoagreed, if they arrive on our doorstep we've already lost in a military sense, although as in War of the Worlds, maybe some of our microbial friends would come to the rescue
- duskwuff 8y agoThere were apparently some rumors circulating that the bright lights were the result of alien activity. The press event had some fun with those rumors. :)
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoHow dangerous is that light? I know welding arcs contain a lot of dangerous UV light for example. It should be fine indirectly (clouds would let the UV pass or absorb it), but directly being exposed to it seems dangerous.
- cududa 8y agoDon’t see why there are downvotes - it’s a genuine question
- lvs 8y agoIt's a good question. It depends on whether we're observing arc discharge or just combustion. If it's arcing, it could surely have a significant UV component. But I suspect this is burning copper or aluminum. HV transformers are filled with some kind of cooling oil, and I suspect that just has to burn off. If it were totally uncontrolled arcing, I'd guess there would be lots of reports of broadband interference that I haven't come across.
- mirimir 8y agoWith that sort of light, there clearly was arcing. But most of the billowing smoke was from burning transformer oil. And about radio interference. This is 60 Hz, so I doubt that's an issue.
- ben_w 8y agoA spark’s RF interference isn’t limited to the frequency of the power supply. I don’t know the mechanism, but when I was a kid I found I could hold a lightswitch in a halfway state and hear the interference on the nearby FM radio. (Classic FM, so ~101 MHz compared to UK mains at 50 Hz).
- mirimir 8y agoOK, fair enough. But I know what arcs look like. And I'm 100% sure that the one in these NYC videos was huge.
- Animats 8y agoThat's impressive. Look forward to seeing a technical analysis. I just checked PJM's emergency event list, and it didn't affect the wholesale grid enough to cause any concern.
- DaOne256 8y agoI have never seen a transformator explosion in Germany or Europe. What is different in the american power grid?
- masonic 8y agoExplosions look cooler at 60Hz.
- Glawen 8y agoIt happens in Europe, it's just that you don't hear about it unless it has an impact. For example this summer in Paris, a train station (gare montparnasse) was without electricity for 3 or 4 days because a transformer was on fire.
- goodcanadian 8y agoAnd, I've never seen one in North America or anywhere else. It is a pretty rare event. I highly doubt that they happen significantly more often in one country or another. There are a lot of transformers in the world, however, and they sometimes fail for a variety of reasons. I hear about it often enough.
- eigenvector 8y agoDistribution transformers (i.e. the small ones that serve homes or individual businesses) are run-to-failure components and they fail all the time. Most of the time, the failure is not as catastrophic as an explosion, because a protection system isolates the circuit and limits the amount of energy discharged through the fault. For various reasons, it can be impractical or not economic to provide very sensitive, very fast protection schemes for distribution systems. An example would be single-wire Earth-return distribution systems which still exist in rural areas of the USA. But rest assured, there are transformer failures on a daily basis all around the world.
- justincormack 8y agoIn the UK we don't generally have transformers per home or business, but mainly larger ones that serve a few hundred homes, usually the size of a shed. I have seen one of those fail but it is not common.
- lvs 8y agoSomeone with HV experience should probably know better, but I'm curious if the color is due to burning copper and/or aluminum. Copper salts used in fireworks burn at nearly this color.
- dschuetz 8y agoExcited copper ions inside the discharge plasma emitting blue->UV light, sounds plausible to me.
- marcosdumay 8y agoThe color fits copper very well. I don't know whether the white is due to an electrical arc or the burning of some magnesium alloy.
- sudhirj 8y agoIn India transformers are build between houses, or on the street just outside houses, so you get some pretty interesting shots like this (happened at an apartment I used to live in) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB2T_r9oVlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB2T_r9oVlI
- skunkworker 8y agoReminds me of the independence day alien attack scene. https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/id4/images/6/6b/ScreenShout031.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20131215161748 https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/id4/images/6/6b/ScreenSh...
- peignoir 8y agoGhostbusters!
- Tsubasachan 8y agoDo not grieve. Soon I shall be one with the Matrix.
- qwerty456127 8y agoEvery time something like this happens it's like "Oh, finally! The aliens! No earthly bullshit any more, all the people will unite to fight the common enemy or die a beautiful way..." and then just meh...
- askvictor 8y agoOnce as a teenage (somewhere in the early 90s) I was watching a thunderstorm in suburban Sydney. I saw lightning strike (probably 5-10km) away, then a couple of seconds after the strike from about where the lightning hit, a blue 'bubble' (though with diffuse edges) rose (as though inflating) then fell/deflated over the course of a few seconds. I've never gotten a good explanation for what it was, though this picture makes me think lightning struck an electricity sub station, caused a brief electrical fire which lit up the sky as it got more intense, then died off.
- ryanmercer 8y agoWhy don't I ever get to see wild stuff in person? Immediately reminded me of 'the Norway spiral' http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/01/20/update-on-the-norway-spiral/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/01/20/up... https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2009_Norwegian_spiral_anomaly https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2009_Norwegian_spiral_anomaly
- snidane 8y agoLiving in Astoria, NY and this happened a mile away from me. At first my TV blips, my spotify shuts down and outside you could see this very bright turquoise light all over the place. It was bright like it was a daytime just in the green blue color. At first I thought it must had been some fireworks nearby, New Year is coming, right? But there was no fireworks noise, no party noise, nothing, just this bright green lit city. I open the window and some lady in the building across me does the same and shouts 'wtf is that?!'. I realize this was not a party and my brain starts spinning.. 1. EMP attack, since the TV got affected 2. Asteroid or comet entering the atmosphere and messing up the magnetosphere 3. Strong solar outburst, causing some local aurora I recently watched Robert Schoch's interview where he discussed huge solar outbursts at the end of last ice age and how the sightings of resulting auroras might have made it into ancient cultures. [https://youtu.be/Vka2ZgzZTvo https://youtu.be/Vka2ZgzZTvo roughly at 21:00] In the end I rushed to the rooftop, scared as f, and noticed this was just a transformer on fire at nearby power plant. Took a video, waited it out and went back.
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago> In the end I rushed to the rooftop, scared as f I'm glad that you were ok. I would probably have over-reacted by diving under the bed. The lesson that I took from the footage of the Chelyabinsk meteor (1) is this: When people see a sudden bright light in the sky, the usual reaction is for them to go to the window to see what it is. So then the blast wave arrives in time to give them a face full of flying glass shards. (2) Don't do this! Doesn't matter if you're being nuked or if it's only a meteor, get down and stay away from the windows! Nothing good will come of having a look-see. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor#Injuries_and_damage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor#Injuries_an...
- stephenr 8y ago> Nothing good will come of having a look-see. I dunno. Might increase the average IQ in the gene pool?
- mrfusion 8y agoThere’s so much we don’t know about high voltages. I never understood why we don’t research it more. I guess too dangerous. Even a phenomenon like this. Could we use it for lighting a whole City for less power than streetlamps?
- complector 8y agoUh, well, for starters, you've got this blazing, uncontrolled discharge of energy, and it's just dumping tons of heat, untraviolet light and irregular magnetic force and radio transmission in all directions. So there's a lot of waste and noisy interference being unloaded in all directions. In fact, it's so wasteful that it's dumping audible noise for miles beyond even the limits of its kinetic heat. Why waste that much energy? It's obviously costly to produce, no? We don't even have a report on how much of the grid's juice went up in smoke. Certainly more than one hour of a 100 watt lightbulb. Maybe a megawatt hour? Maybe one hundred megawatt hours? An hour's worth of one hundred million lightbulbs? Not impossible. And then, of course, there's the fact that night time is a good thing. All vertebrates sleep. All plants need a night cycle, for the dark phase of photosynthesis. Sure, the city is this unnatural human social landscape, but, uh... I think the novelty of a constant high intensity electrical arc's discharge will wear off in about a week or less, for pretty much everybody, and nobody would want to live near it.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago> There’s so much we don’t know about high voltages. I never understood why we don’t research it more. I guess too dangerous. High voltage is quite well-researched. I'm sure there are experts who understand exactly what is happening here. We might not know the immediate cause of the explosion yet. > Even a phenomenon like this. Could we use it for lighting a whole City for less power than streetlamps? I'm a total layman, but it seems like the large majority of the light generated is wasted lighting up the sky instead of the ground. It's only producing as much groundlight as it is because there happened to be low clouds that night. That's why street lamps have reflectors above them to focus the light downwards. That's not even considering the amount energy wasted as heat.
- dcision 8y agoLike the Moonlight Towers that used arc lamps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower
- disabled 8y agoThis was most likely a TDOS attack, as the Ukraine Power Grid attack on December 23, 2015 was a TDOS attack performed by the Russians [1]. Plus, the 911 call centers in various states being out of commission this night/morning, with busy signals, adds to this suspicion [2]. Additionally, there was a BGP network hijacking incident to the US Department of Energy today [3]. [1] https://www.wired.com/2016/03/inside-cunning-unprecedented-hack-ukraines-power-grid/ https://www.wired.com/2016/03/inside-cunning-unprecedented-h... [2] https://www.nojitter.com/when-911-busy https://www.nojitter.com/when-911-busy [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18776051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18776051
- sschueller 8y agoLooks to me more like another poorly maintained piece of the power grid.
- eoShe7th 8y agoSounds like a right wing style conspiracy theory to me.
- unqueued 8y agoI saw it from about 25 miles north, at the train station. The sky was the most beautiful shade of blue. https://unqueued.github.io/public-pictures/ https://unqueued.github.io/public-pictures/
- kolinko 8y agoIf you see bright light, duck and cover. If you go to the window, and it was some kind of a huge explosion, once the shockwave reaches, the windows will shatter and you will get seriously injuired.
- jaredwiener 8y agoI was probably two miles or so away in Manhattan -- there was no noise, no hit to the electricity, nothing. I was watching TV and then saw an otherworldly color sky out he window. The actual source of the bright light was blocked by a building, so it looked a little like what I imagine the aurora borealis looks like. Then it started to rapidly change colors and flicker -- like fireworks, but without the noise. In NYC, stuff happens all the time that is completely innocuous. There's an outdoor venue (Randall's Island) relatively nearby that often has music festivals. In the past few months I have had a very vivid light flashing outside that turned out to be from a construction crane about 8 blocks away; another time a red glow was from the lights of fire engines amassed on a neighboring street during an actual fire. I mention this if only to say it is very easy to criticize someone's behavior in a situation like this after the fact, but when it is happening, the thought that this could be a huge explosion does not even register.
- kolinko 8y agoAh, sorry - not criticising, just reminding :) There was an article on HN recently on how important it is to follow this, and how life saving it can be. If there is a flash and you hear no sound, it doesn’t mean it’s safe either - sound travels 300m/s, so if there was an explosion 2.5miles away, you would only see bright visuals on the sky, no sound, for the first 10-13sec, and then the shockwave would hit...
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoDriving home in the country when I was a kid, the sky lit up like daytime. Dad drove toward it - it was a power substation. He got out and asked a lineman nearby what was up, reported back to us "A raccoon got stuck across a transformer". Apparently it became the equivalent of a carbon arc searchlight, lasted for quite a while by my recollection.
- msisk6 8y agoSeveral years ago at work we lost one of our utility feeds. Turns out a snake got up on the pole and shorted across two phases. Texas.
- overcast 8y agoLooks like someone shut down the Ecto Containment Unit again!
- ghouse 8y agoTransformer "explosions" don't last very long. Transformer fires are a different color. [0] As others have noted, the color suggests arcing. Arcing has a number of different causes, but should be brief -- system protection in the form of circuit breakers should interrupt the flow of power immediately ending the arc. This article is more factual, characterizing it as a electrical fault creating an arc: https://abc7ny.com/electrical-arc-turns-night-sky-blue-in-nyc/4977959/ https://abc7ny.com/electrical-arc-turns-night-sky-blue-in-ny... It is curious that 1) it happened at all, and 2) system protection didn't immediately isolate the circuit. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZipeaAkuC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZipeaAkuC0
- thesz 8y agoElectric arc welding uses, well, arc. And powerful one, I have to add. So you can have long lasting big arc that does not draw enough energy to trigger circuit breakers.
- eigenvector 8y agoIn an arc welder, arcing is the intended mode of operation and any protective devices are set accordingly. In the protection schemes used on the bulk electrical system, we have very sensitive relaying that can pick up on faults of even milli-amps (remember at high voltage even a small amount of current can dissipate a lot of energy) to detect, for instance, high impedance ground faults or turn-to-turn faults inside a transformer.
- skj 8y agoI imagine our conventional understanding of the utility of circuit breakers falls apart quickly as we get to the inside of the actual power plant.
- alexis_fr 8y agoHigh voltage circuit breakers are actually very interesting, videos are on youtube. Some common ones are isolatef with SF6, and as long as there is fluor, it’s nasty.
- johnohara 8y agoWould be interesting to know how many people unwittingly presented to an Urgent Care/ER with symptoms of "welder's flash." ICD-10-CM code H16.139 - Photokeratitis, Unspecified Eye. It's no-joke. You need a mask or you immediately look away. No exceptions.
- pauldix 8y agoI was a few miles away in Williamsburg walking outside when this happened. No line of sight to source because of the buildings. Just saw the clouds & sky turn orange and then bright blue and then it started flickering. Seemed to go on for a few minutes before it just faded away. My wife and I started to get concerned because we had no clue what it could be. I turned to Twitter and found out pretty quickly it was a transformer explosion, but there were about five minutes where we weren't sure what to do just caught out on the street. LGA got shut down briefly because of the power outage. Amazingly, they had it back online in an hour. Which was great for us because we flew out of there this morning.
- mtalantikite 8y agoI was sitting in my living room in Williamsburg when I noticed the lights dim and saw the sky outside was a pulsating blue. It kept it up for what seemed like a couple minutes and I didn't hear any loud explosions, so I just assumed it was a film crew shooting a movie in the neighborhood.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoApparently ConEd now can apply to the Guiness Book of Records for largest arc light ever :-) I really enjoyed some of the twitter comments, "Astoria Borealis", "Amazon HQ corner stone", and "Somebody in Queens better have super powers after this!" The event itself though is a really interesting example of 21st century phenomena observation. Much like the meteor over Chelyabinsk, so much video from a bunch of nearby cameras (dash cam's in Russia and smartphones in New York), it creates an amazing amount of raw data that people can sift through to try to figure out what is going on.