Night owls were treated to an unusual celestial spectacle on Monday night as a glowing spiral appeared in the sky. Reportedly visible in several countries, the white and blue figure is not alien technology, however, but something much simpler.
Media reports suggest that the orb was caused by leftover fuel released into the atmosphere by a SpaceX rocket.
The UK’s Met Office said it had received many reports of an “illuminated swirl” in the British sky on Monday evening that was likely caused by a Falcon 9 rocket that had earlier launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
“The rocket’s frozen exhaust plume appears to be spinning in the atmosphere and reflecting the sunlight, causing it to appear as a spiral in the sky,” the Met Office explained in a post on X late Monday.
“Don’t panic! No, it wasn’t a UFO but the degassing of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket,” the forecaster said on X.
The swirls were caused the launch of SpaceX’s NROL-69 mission, it added.
The classified mission was conducted for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which manages the US military’s spy satellites.
“The Falcon 9 reusable rocket booster returned safely to Landing Zone 1 after delivering the national security payload to orbit,” the office said in a statement.
In 2023, a similar shape was detected in Alaska, which Research Associate Professor Don Hampton of the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska, in an interview with the Associated Press, explained as the result of unused fuel jettisoned by a rocket. As the fuel is released in high altitudes, the fuel freezes and forms ice crystals, which are then perceived as a spiralling orb from Earth.
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