Blue spiral appears amid northern lights in Alaska after SpaceX rocket releases fuel

Northern lights enthusiasts got a surprise as they watched the Alaska skies early on Saturday, when a light blue spiral resembling a galaxy appeared amid the aurora for a few minutes.

The cause of the spiral was excess fuel that had been released from a SpaceX rocket that launched from California about three hours before it appeared.

Sometimes rockets have fuel that needs to be jettisoned, said space physicist Don Hampton, a research associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

“When they do that at high altitudes, that fuel turns into ice,” he said. “And if it happens to be in the sunlight, when you’re in the darkness on the ground, you can see it as a sort of big cloud, and sometimes it’s swirly.”

While not a common sight, Hampton said he’s seen such occurrences about three times.

The appearance of the swirl was caught in time-lapse on the Geophysical Institute’s all-sky camera and shared widely. “It created a bit of an Internet storm with that spiral,” Hampton said.

Photographers observing the northern lights show also posted their photos on social media.

The SpaceX rocket took off from Vandenberg space force base in California Friday night with about 25 satellites on board.

It was a polar launch, making it visible over a large swath of Alaska.

In January, another spiral was spotted over Hawaii’s Big Island. A camera at the summit of Mauna Kea, outside the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Subaru telescope, captured a spiral swirling through the night sky.

Researchers have said it was from the launch of a military GPS satellite that lifted off on a SpaceX rocket in Florida.