A strange phenomenon is observed in the sky over Hawaii: A blue spiral emerges and then disappears again shortly thereafter. What’s behind it?
Update from Thursday, January 26, 4:15 p.m.: Hansjürgen Köhler from the UFO reporting office and the Central Research Network for Extraordinary Celestial Phenomena (CENAP) regularly deals with strange phenomena in the dark sky. When asked by fr.de of IPPEN.MEDIA, he also assumes that a rocket launch by SpaceX is behind the observed spiral in the sky. “These phenomena sometimes occur during rocket launches in the upper layers of the atmosphere, when residual fuels from the last stage are used and the already set sun illuminates the spectacle,” he explains, adding: “From Earth, the whole thing looks spectacular and mysterious. “
In the past, the phenomenon was seen with Russian launch vehicles, Köhler recalls. These “conjured up such spirals in the night sky and conspiracy theories spread about it like ‘star gates to other galaxies’,” according to the sky observer.
Mysterious spiral appeared in the sky – SpaceX rocket launch is behind it
First report from Thursday, January 26, 10:30 a.m.: Hawaii – It’s not a bird, it’s not a plane – but then what is it? A mysterious phenomenon was recently sighted in the sky over Hawaii that amazed observers: A blue spiral formed and then disappeared again some time later. The supposed cloud, which took on different shapes over time, was recorded on January 18, 2023 by the Subaru telescope in Hawaii.
But what is behind the mysterious phenomenon that could be seen with the naked eye in the sky over Hawaii and can be understood in videos on the Internet? To narrow down what happened in the sky above the Subaru telescope, it helps to look at the video showing the mysterious spiral. In it, a bright spot is first seen moving across the night sky.
Mysterious blue spiral spotted in the sky over Hawaii
First, the bright spot emits something that arcs downward. The dot gets bigger, then a bright dot appears in the spot in the sky. The spot in the sky suddenly turns into a blue spiral that rotates a few times, growing larger and slowly fading. But what could cause such a phenomenon?
“The spiral appears to be related to SpaceX’s launch of a new satellite,” officials at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, which operates the Subaru telescope, said. on twitter. In fact, the private space company had SpaceX von Elon Musk on January 18 at 1:24 p.m. CET sent a GPS satellite for the US Space Force into space – a short time later the spiral phenomenon could be seen in the sky over Hawaii.
Strange blue spiral in the sky: SpaceX rocket launch has to do with it
The satellite observer Scott Tilley also assumes on Twitter that the observed spiral has something to do with the SpaceX satellite launch: The position of the spiral corresponds almost exactly to the position at which the second stage of the “Falcon 9” is located. -SpaceX rocket should be in the minutes after launch, he wrote on Twitter.
It’s not the first time such a spiral has been observed in the sky following a SpaceX rocket launch. The phenomenon occurs when the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket dumps unused fuel. After a rocket launch in June 2022 the Spaceweather.com portal explained the phenomenon in more detail: “The upper stage probably rotated around its longest axis to stabilize the direction of flight, hence the spiral shape”.
SpaceX rocket launches often provide strange observations
SpaceX’s rocket launches provide more frequent strange things observed in the sky – for example, jellyfish-like forms have also been observed. However, the most striking are the “Starlink”-Satellites that SpaceX sends into space. In the days after launch, they are usually very prominent in the sky (they appear like a “string of pearls” in the sky) and regularly make calls and emails to the CENAP UFO reporting office.
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But other phenomena related to the SpaceX rocket launches are also occasionally reported. In the Registration statistics 2022, which the UFO registration office recently published, in addition to 238 “Starlink” messages, 52 phenomena related to rocket launches are also listed. In total, the UFO reporting center received 729 reports of strange celestial phenomena last year. (tab)