- Spiral that appeared in the middle of the Northern Lights was left by SpaceX
- It’s not the first time the company has left such a mark in the sky
- Did you capture the spiral? Email [email protected]
It looks like an alien spaceship, or a new galaxy that has suddenly emerged in the sky.
But a mysterious blue spiral that appeared in the middle of the Northern Lights was actually left by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Experts say the spiral shape appeared when SpaceX’s rocket vented unneeded fuel during its long descent into the ocean.
When the rocket fuel was ejected, it froze and crystallised in the shape of a spiral, which was then illuminated by the sun.
Photographers in Iceland and Norway captured the bizarre unnatural phenomenon, which has an eerie, UFO-like appearance.
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sunday, March 4 at 17:05 ET (22:05 GMT).
It carried 53 small satellites to Earth-orbit, a mission known as Transporter-10.
When the rocket’s discarded second stage passed over the Barents Sea in the Arctic Ocean, it performed a de-orbit burn – a firing of its engines to enable it to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
As it spun, the exhaust turned into a spectacular spiral, which caught the light from the sun.
Those who were still awake in the early hours of March 5 in northern Europe were there to witness the strange sight.
Photographer Bettina Begtoft captured the apparition in Norway with the Barents Sea in the foreground.
‘I noticed it at 2:02 am local time,’ Begtoft told spaceweather.com.
‘To the naked eye it looked white, but my Nikon D750 camera revealed the beautiful blue colour.’
Another shot of the same SpaceX spiral was captured Shang Yang in the town of Akureyri, north Iceland.
‘I caught this in Akureyri around 1 am local time on March 5th,’ said Yang.
‘It looked otherworldly against the Northern Lights.’
It is not the first time SpaceX has left observers thinking there might be UFOs present.
In January last year, a blue-tinted spiral was left by the company over Maunakea in Hawaii following the launch of a new satellite.
It was caught on camera by Hawaii’s Subaru Telescope and grew from a small dot into a spiral, which gradually expanded and faded.
And in June 2022, another blue spiral travelling across New Zealand’s skies baffled onlookers who thought it had alien origins.
The spiralling plume of gas lit up the sky over Nelson, a city at the tip of New Zealand’s south island, and travelled 466 miles (750km) south to Stewart Island.
These spirals are a ‘routine by-product’ of SpaceX operations according to spaceweather.com, and are a common sight over the Pacific.
Olivier Staiger, an independent astronomer based in Switzerland, managed to predict the March 5 SpaceX spiral would occur.
He now thinks another one will happen in October during SpaceX’s Transporter-12 mission and could be accompanied with more auroras and meteor showers.
There are two major meteor showers in October – the Draconids (October 8-9) and the Orionids (October 21-22) – which could coincide with Transporter-12.
What’s more, a comet called Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is expected to reach its peak and become visible from Earth in September or October 2024.
Dr. Thomas Hughes is a UK-based scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to readers. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
