It is the turn of Hong Kong residents to be hit by speculations of a UFO visit after a cloud that looks like a Martian spacecraft was spotted over the Special Administrative Region (SAR) on Friday. Similar cloud formations were seen in other parts of the world, such as South America and Russia, in recent months.
The spectacle was only for three minutes, but photographer Alfred Lee was swift enough to have taken a shot of the cloud which has similar shape like lens and saucer shape like Martian ship in “War of the Worlds.” However, Gizmodo explained that what was seen was a lenticular cloud.
Lenticular clouds usually form at high altitudes and aligned at almost perfect right angles to the wind direction. To add to the celestial spectacle, an iridescent cloud was directly behind the lenticular cloud.
Water droplets that diffract the incoming sunlight provided the rainbow-light of the unique and rare sky show that lasted only a few minutes, but Lee caught it on camera.
However, the natural phenomenon took another color beyond the rainbow hues seen when a reader of Gizmodo, George Dvorsky who used the handle Iron Man Underoos, commented, “Hong Kong is invaded everyday by Mainlanders.” He then added, “Sadly, those aliens also abduct book publishers.”
Dvorsky was apparently referring to Gui Minhai, a naturalized Swiss citizen who “disappeared” from Hong Kong for over four months and then surfaced in mid-January in the mainland. Gui said in a confession aired over state TV that he voluntarily went back to China and turned over himself to authorities to take responsible for a drunk-driving conviction he fled 11 years ago.
The 2003 fatal hit-and-run accident resulted in the death of a female college student. Gui was convicted in August 2004 and given a two-year prison term deferred for two years, but he left China and settled in Hong Kong where he opened a bookstore.
On Sunday night, Gui and three of his “missing” colleagues were mentioned in a TV newscast that they had admitted sending banned books to their customers in the mainland. However, Gui’s daughter, Angela, refused to believe Gui went back to China on his own, reported LA Times.