A large swirl of bright white light appeared out of nowhere in the night sky over the Arctic last week, briefly eclipsing a colorful aurora that stretched for thousands of miles.
The display of airy light in the shape of a galaxy originated through an illuminated cloud of frozen gas that fell into space via a SpaceX rocket, which carried dozens of satellites into low-Earth orbit.
Astronomers call this rare phenomenon the “SpaceX spiral” and hope that in the future it will become a much less unusual phenomenon.
Related: A Strange Blue Spiral in Hawaii’s Night Sky Generated by the SpaceX Rocket
On March 4, at 5:05 p. m. EST, SpaceX unveiled a Falcon Nine rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The rocket was a component of the Transport-10 project and carried 53 satellites owned by several other advertising companies, which were effectively put into orbit around our planet about two hours later. launch, reported Space. com.
Shortly after the payload was deployed, the rocket’s second stage, which had already separated from the rocket’s first-stage reusable booster, began to deorbit and then burned up in the environment over the Barents Sea in the Arctic. During this maneuver, the spinning rocket spewed its remaining fuel into space, which then froze into tiny crystals that spiraled out and reflected sunlight back to Earth.
Related: A halo of ethereal light around the full moon detected during the recent launch of a SpaceX rocket
Aurora photographer Shang Yang captured a striking photo of the illuminated swirl near the town of Akureyri in Iceland around 1 a. m. m. local time on March 5. ” The Northern Lights looked otherworldly,” Shang told Spaceweather. com. The display lasted about 10 minutes before dissipating.
The swirl of light was also captured in a live aurora broadcast in Iceland and was photographed in Finland and Norway, where it had a striking blue color.
SpaceX’s spirals are rare. But they’re becoming more common as the number of SpaceX launches increases.
In April 2023, a striking blue spiral from SpaceX photobombed an aurora over Alaska. The phenomenon was also detected twice through a camera attached to the Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii: the first in April 2022 and the second in January last year.
The spirals don’t appear after each launch, for a number of reasons, adding up the speed of rotation of the booster, the time of day, and the orientation of the rocket with respect to Earth and the sun. Therefore, it is difficult to know when they appear. it’s going to be visible.
— Air pollutants caused by re-entry of megaconstellation satellites can cause the hole in the ozone layer 2. 0
— Megaconstellations can destroy astronomy, and there’s no simple solution
— SpaceX’s Starlink satellites emit radiation that “photobombs” our attempts to reach the cosmos.
However, astrophotographer Olivier Staiger correctly predicted that the Transport-10 project would produce a spiral over the Arctic, Spaceweather. com reported. He learned that the rocket’s various payloads would require it to spin more than normal during deployment, meaning it would continue to spin while unloading fuel.
Staiger also predicts that there will be a strong SpaceX spiral over Iceland and other parts of the Arctic when the Transporter-12 project launches in October this year.
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He studied Marine Biology at the University of Exeter (Penryn campus) and, after graduating, started his own blog “Marine Madness”, which he continues to run with other ocean enthusiasts. interested in evolution, climate change, robots, area exploration, environmental conservation, and all things fossilized. When he’s not at work, he can be discovered watching sci-fi movies, betting on old Pokemon games, or running (probably slower than him). I like it).
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