A strange blue and spiral shaped light and night sky - what was it? Space X encountered this situation at the time of rocket launch.
Could this strange object be related to aliens? This mysterious incident has once again strengthened our belief in aliens.
But little green men aside, the phenomenon captured over Rakiura in New Zealand by Twinkle Day Dark Sky tours stargazing guide Alasdair Burns on Sunday still had people scratching their heads.
The photograph was taken at 7:25 p.m. as per local time using long exposure, after Burns received a text from a friend who had spotted something strange in the sky.
What caused the blue spiral?
Auckland University physicist Professor Richard Easther told the Guardian that it was likely a cloud formed by a rocket carrying a satellite into orbit — most probably SpaceX's Globalstar FM15 launch on Sunday, which was the final mission of the spaceflight company accomplishing three launches in just 36 hours .
On Friday, SpaceX launched more of its Starlink internet satellites from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
On Saturday, it was a German military satellite from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base. And on Sunday, it was a communications satellite for American company Globalstar, launched by a Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral.
It's Sunday's Globalstar mission Easther believes is connected to the spiral image Burns took.
“When the propellant is ejected out the back, you have what’s essentially water and carbon dioxide — that briefly forms a cloud in space that’s illuminated by the sun,” he explained to the news outlet.
"The geometry of the satellites orbit and also the way that we're sitting relative to the sun — that combination of things was just right to produce these completely wacky looking clouds that were visible from the South Island."
So a fairly run-of-the-mill explanation in the end, but still an undeniably cool picture.
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