A ghostly blue snail spotted in the skies over Hawaii could be associated with a SpaceX satellite launch.
Japan National Astronomical Observatory The mysterious snail was spotted by the Subaru Telescope on January 18right after SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a large military satellite for the US Space Force.
He was busy doing other work that night and didn’t notice the other shape forming in the telescope’s view, said Ichi Tanaka, a researcher with the Subaru Telescope. Watchman. Then someone sent him a screenshot from the YouTube live stream.
“When I opened Slack, this is what I saw and it was an amazing event for me,” said Tanaka. Watchman.
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On Twitter, the observatory shared an image of the cosmic vortex and posted a video of the spiral formation as it circled over Mauna Kea volcano, then dissipated.
The Subaru Telescope said on Twitter Jan. 19: “The Subaru Asahi Star Camera captured a mysterious flying vortex over Maunaki, Hawaii. The snail appears to be associated with the launch of a new SpaceX satellite.”
On January 18, 2023 (HST), the Subaru Asahi Star Camera captured a mysterious flying vortex over Maunakea, Hawaii. The spiral appears to be related to SpaceX’s launch of a new satellite.
Watch the video:https://t.co/851Gz7VojV# Subaru Telescope pic.twitter.com/Np58fxpX9e– Subaru Telescope Engineer (SubaruTel_Eng) January 19, 2023
The launch occurred in Cape Canaveral, Florida, but satellite tracker Scott Tilly answered to a tweet saying that the location of the helix over Hawaii closely matched the location of the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket at the time.
This is the part of the rocket that propels its passenger satellite into Earth’s orbit, after the rocket’s booster (first stage) separates and returns to Earth.
SpaceWeather.comwhich tracks sightings of such phenomena, speculated that the mysterious spiral came from the Falcon 9’s first stage fuel dump during its descent.
This isn’t the first time a vortex has been spotted in the sky after a SpaceX launch. After the Florida launch in June 2022, a similar vortex was seen over Queenstown, New Zealand, Washington Post mentioned.
These helixes from SpaceX are becoming “popular over the Pacific Ocean” as the company ramps up the pace of Falcon 9 launches, according to SpaceWeather.com.
The Falcon 9 rockets created other colorful and ethereal formations in the sky, too. The launch that would have resulted in the New Zealand spiral may also have created the “smoke ring” formation in the sky over the central United States, according to SpaceWeather.com.
The SpaceX rocket is also known as “Space jellyfishIt often plots across the sky as it climbs up into the atmosphere.
This article was originally published by Business interested.
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