In other places, it is a large, dynamic glow in the sky caused by charged particles from TheSun being deflected into the earth's atmosphere by its MagneticField?. The particles ionize upper atmospheric gases and do the glowy neon tube thing on an absurdly large scale.
AuroraBorealis (on this planet) can be green, white, red, blue, PurPle or other colors. Green and white are the most common.
There are those who believe that the TeslaProject is a secret US government program to harness the awesome power of the AuroraBorealis using techniques perhaps first envisioned by NikolaTesla and use it to implement global climate change, sweeping mind control, and other neat and useful things like that.
NOT a rocket launch.