It does look like a rocket/missile that screwed up and started spinning in a big circle while still firing off it's fuel. I've seen that happen many times back when I taught rocket making at summer camp, although usually it would be in a circular pattern along the grassy area rather than up in the sky. The kids would make their cardboard tube rockets and if the propellant cartridge wasn't sitting properly or just decided to go off half-cocked, the rocket would go up in a circular pattern - in fact, they were MOST likely to go off circular even when they went up fairly straight for the most part.
That would explain 1)the spiral pattern of the initial firing (the blue-green DNA-looking bit coming from the ground), 2)the luminescence put off from the epicenter, 3)the spinning effect in the sky AND the force that was pushing previous circles of smoke outward, and 4)the sudden going out of the light, presumable when the rocket finally ran out of fuel.
If anything, I'm curious as to the actual size of the epicenter. Since there's no basis of comparison regarding how far out and up the initial rocket traveled, nor it's supposed speed, that epicenter could have a pretty wide range of sizes.
*begin math stuff* If I were to take a horribly amateur guess, I would say it was at max speed when it began spinning itself into a circle, and I would average that to be, say 2000 m/s (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/SeanManning.shtml). Given the video, it appears to be making approximately one revolution per second, so the circumference of the epicenter is ~2000m. So, that would make the diameter (2000/3.14) 636.9m, or approximately 1/3 a mile.
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That would explain 1)the spiral pattern of the initial firing (the blue-green DNA-looking bit coming from the ground), 2)the luminescence put off from the epicenter, 3)the spinning effect in the sky AND the force that was pushing previous circles of smoke outward, and 4)the sudden going out of the light, presumable when the rocket finally ran out of fuel.
If anything, I'm curious as to the actual size of the epicenter. Since there's no basis of comparison regarding how far out and up the initial rocket traveled, nor it's supposed speed, that epicenter could have a pretty wide range of sizes.
*begin math stuff*
If I were to take a horribly amateur guess, I would say it was at max speed when it began spinning itself into a circle, and I would average that to be, say 2000 m/s (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/SeanManning.shtml). Given the video, it appears to be making approximately one revolution per second, so the circumference of the epicenter is ~2000m. So, that would make the diameter (2000/3.14) 636.9m, or approximately 1/3 a mile.