Mururoa Sun

Back in the early seventies I saw the sky light up, but no-one else ever said they saw it too. I watched the news and read the paper, but no mention anywhere of what this could have been. Until four days later, when a tiny notice in the New Zealand Herald confirmed another nuclear bomb test in Mururoa Atoll, the day and time of which, when converted to New Zealand time, coincided exactly with my flash.

I saw the flash in Tokoroa, some 4667.5km away from the Atoll (according to "Distance Calculator - How Far Is It?". I remember it was orange in colour and lit up the eastern third of the sky. It lasted about one or two seconds.

I can't recall exactly the date it happened, but I'll keep working towards solving this. At this stage I have worked out that it was at 7pm on a Sunday in an early seventies winter.

The reason I know it was at 7pm on a Sunday is that I was in the car with my family on our way to church, and we were running late for seven o'clock mass. We were travelling east down Balmoral Drive when the sky lit up for just a brief moment. The moment was too short for everyone in the car to see it once I drew their attention to it.

The reason I know it was in a winter month is that it was dark at the time, so it must have been around the shortest day, 21 June, give or take a month or so.

When I discovered the cause of the flash, it frightened me. To be able to observe this "test" from such a distance made me wonder what damage this might have caused, closer by through the shock and heat, and further away through radiation and whatever else a nuclear bomb produces.

To put it in perspective, the distance from Los Angeles to New York is less than 4000km, and the distance from London to Moscow is only 2500km.

From "Nuclear Explosions" website, atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted on the following dates and times (I don't know if these are local times or otherwise):

05 JUN 1971 19:15:00 (sat)
12 JUN 1971 19:14:57 (sat)
04 JUL 1971 21:30:00 (sun)
08 AUG 1971 18:30:00 (sun)
14 AUG 1971 19:00:00 (sat)
25 JUN 1972 19:00:00 (sun)
30 JUN 1972 18:30:00 (fri)
29 JUL 1972 18:40:00 (sat)
21 JUL 1973 18:00:00 (sat)
28 JUL 1973 23:03:00 (sat)
18 AUG 1973 18:15:00 (sat)
24 AUG 1973 18:00:00 (fri)
28 AUG 1973 18:30:00 (tue)
16 JUN 1974 17:30:00 (sun)
07 JUL 1974 23:15:00 (sun)
17 JUL 1974 17:00:00 (wed)
26 JUL 1974 17:30:00 (fri)
15 AUG 1974 :30:00 (thu)
25 AUG 1974 23:45:00 (sun)
14 SEP 1974 23:30:00 (sat)

I've added the day of the week in brackets - if these are local times, then it would have been saturday there (other side of international dateline)(highlighed above). And I would also expect the time to be 8pm or so. So I don't know which one of these I observed, as none of them fit the day/time requirements exactly.