A strange blue spiral of light was captured by an eyewitness in a photo in the night sky. Conspiracy theorists can relax, it’s definitely not a UFO. The phenomenon was seen over Stewart Island in New Zealand. It was photographed by the Twinkle Day Dark Sky Tours star tour guide Alasdair Burns on Sunday, June 19.
The photo was taken at 07:25 p.m. local time with a long exposure, after Burns received a message from his friend who noticed something strange in the sky. The picture puzzled astronomers at first, but an explanation was quickly found for it.
What could have caused the blue spiral to appear?
Physicist from the University of Auckland Professor Richard Easter commented on the phenomenon to The Guardian. According to the scientist, this is probably a cloud formed by a rocket in the upper atmosphere, which put the satellite into orbit. Most likely, it was the launch of SpaceX Globalstar FM15 on Sunday. It was a record event for Elon Musk’s company – SpaceX then made three rocket launches into orbit in just 36 hours.
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship pic.twitter.com/3Mqa22OWqw
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 19, 2022
“When fuel is ejected from the nozzle of a rocket engine, the byproduct from combustion remains water and carbon dioxide, which briefly form a cloud in space illuminated by the sun,” he explained to the news agency.
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