On the weekend of April 26 and 27, 2026, Jake Asuncion was filming the sunset near Keahole Point on Hawaii’s Big Island when he noticed something odd: faint green lights spreading across the sky about 15 to 20 minutes after the sun went down. They were hard to see with the naked eye but showed up brightly on camera. He caught them again the next night.

His videos made the rounds, and local astronomers were asked to explain them. They couldn’t, at least not right away. Satellites look like small pinpoint lights moving across the sky, one told KHON2, and this didn’t look like that. Meteor showers didn’t fit either. Neither did lasers, nor the well-known green flash that sometimes appears at the moment of sunset, since these lights appeared well after the sun had set and higher in the sky. The geomagnetic index that weekend was moderate, which made an aurora unlikely that far south.

Astronomers did offer one caution: smartphone cameras boost colors in low light, so the glow may have looked much stronger on video than in real life.

Hawaii has had strange green lights before. In January 2023, green laser beams over Maunakea were later linked to a Chinese satellite. Nothing like that has been established here.