On January 18, very early in the morning, a strange luminous spiral lit up the sky nocturnenocturne from Hawaii. Of colorcolor blue, she was captured by the telescopetelescope Subaru, located at the top of the volcanovolcano Mauna Kea, over 4,000 meters above sea level. The video shows its appearance from a point of light growing gradually, then its dissipation which occurred in a few minutes. The phenomenon had already been observed in April 2022, so that its origin was quickly found: it is a rocketrocket of SpaceX, launched on January 18 in the morning from Cap CanaveralCap Canaveral in Florida.
It is more precisely the second stage of a launcher Falcon 9Falcon 9. It was separated from the first three minutes after the rocket launched, then deployed a satellite. Once its mission was completed, the stage used all of its remaining fuel to return to Earth. This ejection caused it to rotate, explaining the observed spiral appearance, corresponding to frozen fuel crystals!
