What was that mysterious pink cloud over the ocean last night?

Courtesy of Chris Bakley

Shortly after sunset last night, social media was abuzz with chatter about the appearance of a mysterious pink ball or cloud-like form over the ocean.

Was it some sort of gas release or weather-related activity? A UFO, perhaps?

As it turns out, the sight was not the result of natural phenomena or an alien visitation, as some folks speculated. The effect was created by a NASA rocket that launched from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia by the Department of Defense.

"The launch was to study ionization in space just beyond the reaches of Earth's atmosphere," NASA explained in an official press release. "After flying to an altitude of several hundred miles about 500 miles off the shore, the rocket's payload released a small quantity of vapor in the near-vacuum of space."

Pretty cool stuff! 

NASA went on to note that "there is no danger to public health or the Earth's environment from the vapor release."

We reached out to local astrophotographer and Cape May County's resident expert on all things outer space Chris Bakley, who explained why the tracer appeared so brightly in the evening sky.

"If you were laying down on the beach and watching the sunset, you could watch the sun dip below the horizon,then stand up and see it do the same thing again for brief moment," he said. "For the tracer, though, while the transition to night was happening down here on Earth, the tracer was released into the sunlight a few hundred miles up, causing it to be illuminated!"