When India successfully launched the Chandrayaan-2 at 2:43 pm, it was about 7:30 pm in the night, in Australia. That was incidentally also the time around which a ‘strange’ light was seen in the skies over the Northern Territory and Queensland which left many people in awe.
Shauna Royes spotted the light over the Julia Creek caravan park in remote north-west Queensland about 7:30 pm on Monday night, and reached out to the ABC North West Facebook page to figure out what it was.
Talking about witnessing the bright light in the sky the McKinlay Shire Councillor reportedly said, "We were actually at the caravan park having a bush dinner for not-for-profit organisations, so there was about 160 people, and one of the tourists looked up and said, 'look'.”
"It was quite a bright, unusual light with a tail on it. It was travelling north-east and we watched it for probably two or three minutes before it faded out. We had no idea what it was. It was really unusual," he further said.
A person named Jacob Blunt captured a video of the ‘strange bright light' in the sky and in the clip he can be heard saying, "Look at it, it is an alien or UFO.”
"I thought it was a UFO, so I tried to shoot it with my NERF gun," he reportedly posted on the ABC North West Facebook page later.
But those people who got unnecessarily excited at the sighting of alien life are going to be disappointed. Because what the Australians saw was not the sign of alien life, it was the sign of India going to the moon.
Okay let’s look at this logically: Time difference between India and Sydney is five hours. So, when Chandrayaan-2 was launched it was night in Australia, the entire mission was over in 16 minutes. It means the Chandrayaan-2 left the orbit of the Earth in that time.
Look at the trajectory that Chandrayaan-2 was to follow. In the chart below that ISRO telecast during the live feed of the launch, one can see that it is going from the south (notice the boundaries of Sri Lanka in the far left corner). So, in all probability Chandrayaan-2 passed over the Southern hemisphere and most likely over Australia too.
So, all facts point towards the conclusion that Australians witnessed the light India’s of success on its way to the moon - to the Southern part of the moon where no one has been before.