What was that weird light over the sky in Columbus?

Columbus stargazers were greeted with an unusual sight the night of Aug. 12: a bright bowtie-shaped light hanging in the night sky.

Columbus redditors in Clintonville, Baltimore, the German Village, Canal Winchester, New Albany, Whitehall, the Victorian Village, Plain City and Delaware reported sightings of the phenomenon. They weren't alone; redditors from North Dakota, Brooklyn, Cleveland, Virginia and Syracuse, New York also reported seeing the swirl.

It was too widespread to be a plane, too oddly shaped to be a meteor, too big to be a satellite, so what was it?

Aliens?

As it turns out, the cause of the strange light was a spacecraft, but not one piloted by little green men. There were two rocket launches last night that could have caused the anomaly, one launched from Cape Canavera