look. A stunning blue swirl appears with the northern lights in Alaska | Science and the planet

The whirlpool, which appeared Saturday morning in Alaska amidst the green rays of the Northern Lights, caused an astonishing surprise that resonates on the Internet to this day. How can this be explained? Three hours before this phenomenon occurred, a SpaceX rocket from California released excess fuel.

“Sometimes rockets have fuel that needs to be ejected,” says astrophysicist Don Hampton, associate professor at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “When they do it at high altitude, that fuel turns into ice,” he says. “And if it happens in sunlight and it’s dark on Earth at the time, you can think of it as kind of a big cloud, sometimes spinning.”

The appearance of the light blue spiral was captured as a time snapshot on the Geophysics Institute’s all-sky camera and the images quickly went viral. “This phenomenon has caused a storm on the Internet,” Hampton said.

Although it is not a familiar sight, it is not entirely unique. For example, another spiral was seen over the Big Island of Hawaii in January.

A SpaceX rocket launched Friday night at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, carrying about 25 satellites. It was a polar launch, which set them apart It is visible across most of Alaska.