🚀 What is this mysterious light spiral that appeared in the Icelandic sky?

2024-03-23 07:00:13

The Arctic night was the scene of a rare and spectacular phenomenon: a huge spiral of white light emerged, illuminating the sky above Iceland. This spectacle briefly stole the show from an aurora borealis spanning thousands of kilometers (The meter (symbol m, from the Greek metron, measurement) is the basic unit of length of the System…).

This galactic-looking phenomenon is the result of a cloud of frozen fuel, ejected into space by a SpaceX rocket during the deployment of several satellites (Satellite may refer to:) in low earth orbit (Low Earth orbit (LEO) is an area of ​​the Earth’s orbit…). Astronomers, who predict an increase in frequency (In physics, frequency generally refers to the measurement of the number of times a…) of these spirals in the future, named them “SpaceX spirals”.

A great spiral of light (Light is all electromagnetic waves visible to the eye…) white, known as “spiral (In mathematics, a spiral is a curve that starts at a central point and then branches out…) SpaceX,” was photographed during an aurora borealis display over Iceland last week.
Credit: Shang Yang

On March 4, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Station in California, carrying 53 satellites. Approximately two hours after launch, these satellites were successfully placed into orbit around our planet (A planet is a celestial body orbiting the Sun or another star in…). Shortly thereafter, the rocket’s upper stage, already separated from the reusable first stage, began its descent and disintegrated into theatmosphere (The word atmosphere can have several meanings 🙂 above the Barents Sea (The Barents Sea is the sea of ​​the Arctic Ocean which is located north of Norway and…)in L’Arctic (The Arctic is the region surrounding the Earth’s north pole, in and around…). During this maneuver, the remaining fuel was released into space, formant (In intonation, changes in fundamental frequency are perceived as variations in…) frozen crystals that spread out in a spiral and reflected light from the Sun back to Earth. Photographer Shang Yang captured this impressive scene near the town of Akureyri, Iceland, around 1 a.m. on March 5. The light spiral, lasting about 10 minutes, presented a striking contrast. This spectacle was also captured during a diffusion (In common parlance, the term diffusion refers to a notion of…) live from the Northern Lights in Iceland, and photographed in Finland as well as Norway, where the spiral sported a striking blue color.

“SpaceX spirals” are rare, but are becoming more and more common with the increase in the number of launches by Elon Musk’s company. They do not appear after each launch, their visibility depending on several factors, such as the rotation speed of the rocket stage, the time of day and theorientation (In the literal sense, the orientation designates or materializes the direction of the East (sunrise…) of the rocket relative to the Earth and the Sun.

The Transporter-10 mission launched from Vandenberg Space Station at 5:05 p.m. EST on March 4.
Credit: SpaceX

Olivier Staiger, an astrophotographer, correctly predicted the appearance of this spiral above the Arctic following the Transporter-10 launch, after analyzing the specifics of the mission. He also anticipates another impressive spiral over Iceland and other parts of the Arctic when the Transporter-12 mission launches in October this year.

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