A mysterious blue whirlwind lit up the night sky over Alaska

This past weekend, Alaskans witnessed an unusual sight: an eerie pale blue spiral appearing in the night sky.

It appeared during the northern lights (charged particles of the Sun interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere, forming bright stripes of green).

But despite its UFO or portal-like appearance, the mysterious spiral has a much simpler explanation. It was just excess propellant that was ejected from a SpaceX rocket that lifted off from California about three hours before the spiral appeared. Experts say the spiral shape is due to the Falcon 9’s upper stage spewing waste fuel during its long descent into the ocean.

“Rockets have fuel that often needs to be jettisoned,” said space physicist Dr. Don Hampton, research associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

“When this is done at high altitudes, the fuel turns into ice. And if it happens in sunlight, when you’re in the dark on the ground, you might see it as something like a big swirling cloud.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Friday evening.

It was a polar launch that made it visible over much of Alaska. Falcon 9 carried 51 spacecraft as payload, which were deployed as part of the Transporter-7 mission. About three hours after launch, early Saturday morning, a spiral appeared, caused by water vapor in the rocket’s exhaust fluids.

The timing of the fuel release was calculated specifically to ensure its visibility over Alaska. “And we ended up with a really cool looking spiral thing,” said Dr. Hampton.

Photographers who participated in the Northern Lights show also posted their photos on social networks.

One of them reported that aliens had arrived.

Randell Mayo of Fairbanks, Anchorage posted the photo and wrote that it was “the craziest thing he’s ever seen”:

“At first it looked like a spiral of the northern lights, until the center slowly appeared in the field of view, which slowly flew from horizon to horizon. Then the spiral spread and covered the entire sky, dissipating like ripples on water.

This is not the first time that a SpaceX launch has led observers to think that UFOs may be present. In January, another spiral was seen, but this time over the Big Island of Hawaii.

The unusual picture was captured on camera by the Subaru telescope located on the top of Maunakea. The researchers said this was the result of the launch of a military GPS satellite that had previously been launched on a SpaceX rocket in Florida.

Last June, a mysterious blue spiral moving across New Zealand’s sky baffled observers who thought it was also of alien origin. A spiraling column of gas lit up the sky over Nelson, a city in New Zealand, and flew 750 km south to Stewart Island.

However, experts later found out that this phenomenon was caused by artificial space debris in the form of a dying rocket launched by the Musk company.

Christina DENISYUK.

Source: dailymail.co.uk