A SpaceX satellite launch may be the cause of the spectral blue spiral seen over Hawaii.
The intriguing spiral was discovered on January 18 by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan using its Subaru Telescope, just after SpaceX had launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a sizable military satellite for the US Space Force.
Ichi Tanaka, a researcher with the Subaru Telescope, claimed that because he was preoccupied with other tasks that evening, he missed the strange shape that was growing in the telescope’s field of view. The YouTube livestream screenshot was then shared to him.
Tanaka told The Guardian, “That is what I saw when I opened Slack and it was a jaw-dropping event for me.”
On Twitter, the observatory shared an image of the cosmic whirlpool and posted a video of the spiral formation flying over the Mauna Kea volcano, then dissipating.
“The Subaru-Asahi Star Camera captured a mysterious flying spiral over Maunakea, Hawai`i,” the Subaru Telescope said on Twitter on January 19. “The spiral seems to be related to the SpaceX company’s launch of a new satellite.”
The tweet’s response from satellite tracker Scott Tilley noted that the spiral above Hawaii nearly matched the position of the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket at the time of the launch, which took place from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
After the rocket booster (first stage) splits and crashes back to Earth, that part of the rocket propels its passenger satellite all the way into Earth’s orbit.
The mysterious spiral, according to SpaceWeather.com, which tracks occurrences of phenomena like this, may have resulted from the first stage of the Falcon 9 dumping fuel as it plummeted.
A spiral has been noticed in the sky following a SpaceX launch before. The Washington Post stated that a similar spiral was spotted over Queenstown, New Zealand, following a launch in Florida in June 2022.
According to SpaceWeather.com, these SpaceX spirals are “becoming regular over the Pacific” as the corporation accelerates the number of Falcon 9 launches.
Several additional vibrant and ethereal sky patterns have also been created by Falcon 9 rockets. According to SpaceWeather.com, the same launch that may have caused the New Zealand spiral may have also caused a “smoke ring” formation over the central US.
Another well-known feature of the SpaceX rocket is the “space jellyfish” it frequently spray-paints across the sky as it soars through the atmosphere.
