The cause of the magical spiral was one of the rockets of the space company SpaceX.
Northern lights fans were rubbing their eyes early Saturday morning in Alaska. A blue, spiral-shaped light phenomenon was visible in the middle of the northern lights for a few minutes, he says The Guardian (you are switching to another service).
The reason for the phenomenon was surplus fuel that was released from SpaceX’s rocket. The rocket had been launched three hours earlier from California, USA.
The rocket is one of the numerous ships of the SpaceX company. It carried 25 satellites into space.
Space physicist Don Hampton The Geophysical Institute of Alaska Fairbanks says that sometimes rockets have extra fuel that has to be thrown overboard.
– When it is done at high altitude, the fuel freezes. If the frozen fuel hits the sunlight and the viewer is in the dark on Earth, you’ll see some kind of big cloud, and sometimes it’s spiral, Hampton explains.
The spiral was photographed with the geophysical institute’s camera. It was widely shared on social media. Local aurora photographers also shared their shots with others.