A strange swirl in the sky seen over much of Britain and Europe this week wasn’t the result of alien activity but rather a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The UK’s Met Office, which monitors weather conditions in Britain, announced that the striking vision seen overhead was not a cause for concern but the result of a rocket launch.
“We’ve received many reports of an illuminated swirl in the sky this evening,” the Met Office wrote on X, sharing various images of the swirl. “This is likely to be caused by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launched earlier today. 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”
Although some people at first thought the swirl was an unusual weather phenomenon or even due to extraterrestrial activity, in fact the cause was more prosaic. SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Monday night, carrying a US spy satellite to be deployed as part of its NROL-69 mission. That satellite was deployed, and then the rocket dumped its excess fuel before returning to Earth.
According to Lord Dover of Hertfordshire’s Bayfordbury Observatory, who spoke to the Guardian, this fuel froze as it was dumped and reflected light from the sun. As the fuel cloud spread, it formed a swirling cloud shape which was visible as the rocket traveled over the Atlantic. The spiral shape is created by the path that the rocket’s upper stage takes as it falls back to Earth, and whether it creates a visible object in the sky is to do with the altitude at which the fuel is released.
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The swirl was visible for around 10 minutes, and according to space.com it was spotted in Croatia, Poland, and Hungary as well as in the UK. Reports have also come about the spiral from as far north as Copenhagen, Denmark. Though it looks remarkably like the shape of a spiral galaxy, this object was much closer to us as it was within Earth’s atmosphere.
Although it is rare to see such objects in the skies over Europe, experts predict that they will become a more common sight as the number of rocket launches increases.