Unusual spiral has been noticed in Arctic sky: What is it in reality?

A massive swirling vortex of bright white color appeared literally out of nowhere in the night sky over the Arctic last week. In reality, the spectacular light show in the night sky was caused by a glowing cloud of frozen fuel discharged by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which deployed dozens of satellites into low Earth orbit. Astronomers dubbed this rare phenomenon the "SpaceX spiral" and anticipate it becoming much more common in the future.

SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on March 4th at 17:05 local time (March 5th, 00:05 MSK). The rocket carried 53 satellites owned by several companies. They were successfully placed into orbit approximately two hours after liftoff.

The first stage of the rocket separated from the second stage minutes after liftoff and made a soft landing. The second stage began to deorbit later after payload deployment, ultimately burning up in the atmosphere over the Barents Sea in the Arctic. Upon atmospheric re-entry, the spinning second stage released remaining fuel from its tanks, which froze and turned into tiny crystals. These crystals spread out into a spiral and reflected sunlight onto the Earth's surface.

Photographer Shang Yang managed to capture the bright glow caused by the rocket's fuel discharge while in the vicinity of Akureyri, Iceland. The glow was visible for approximately 10 minutes before dissipating. "Against the backdrop of the aurora borealis, it looked otherworldly," Yang noted.

The unusual phenomenon was caught on video during a live stream of the northern lights in Iceland and was also captured by photographers in Finland and Norway. While such events are currently rare, they are expected to become more common as the number of SpaceX rocket launches increases.