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Alasdair Burns is passionate about astronomy who is dedicated to observing and displaying the sky from New Zealand, but even for him –a fan of the cosmos and telescopes–
the celestial spiral that appeared on June 19 was “disturbing”
.
It started out as a point of light that within minutes tripled in size at night.
Burns was told by a friend and he called his neighbors.
Photos of the phenomenon quickly circulated on social networks.
Some compared it to a "beautiful galaxy", others with "a door to another dimension" and someone in networks asked: "Elon Musk or UFOs?"
One of our readers sent us an image of the phenomenon with the description: “Mysterious spiral light spotted in the sky of New Zealand”.
The message reached our WhatsApp line enabled to verify news.
We consulted a professor of aerodynamics and mechanical engineering, a professor of physics, and Burns himself, who saw and photographed the spiral, to answer this question.
Burns was home when a friend wrote him a message that said, "Look at the sky."
"We ran out and there was that huge spiral,"
he told Noticias Telemundo.
He and his wife, Jennifer Ross, live on Stewart Island (
Rakiura
in the Maori language) and in 2020 they founded Twinkle Dark Sky Tours, a business geared towards those curious about astronomy, like him.
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In 2019, Stewart Island, the third largest in New Zealand by surface area, was declared an International Dark Sky Sanctuary, meaning that due to its remote location and lack of light pollution it is an "exceptional" and "unsurpassed" space for observe starry nights and other types of phenomena.
“When we saw the spiral it was quite creepy – despite being sure it was of human origin – it was still quite disturbing”
Alasdair Burns
They notified their neighbors and the photos began to circulate on the internet.
"She took about 20 minutes to fade from when we first saw her,"
she said.
According to local media, the spiral appeared around 07:20 pm.
Alasdair Burns took these two photographs of the spiral seen in New Zealand.
"It took about 20 minutes to fade from when we first saw it," he told Noticias Telemundo. Alasdair Burns / Twinkle Dark Sky Tours
“It looked like a planet or a star.
It was just a white dot with a small spiral.
And
in 10 minutes it had crossed half the sky and tripled in size
,” Augustine Matthews told Stuff, a New Zealand news portal.
“In New Zealand some pilots confirm strange lights on the radar.
And some mysterious spheres of fire, which are captured on camera, almost collided with a police helicopter,” posted a user on the social network Twitter.
"I think my children opened a door to another dimension," someone else commented.
Experts say the spiral isn't so "mysterious" after all, tracing its origin to the United States.
Falcon 9 launch
At 12:27 in the morning, from the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida, the countdown began for the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket, from the space company of businessman Elon Musk, SpaceX.
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This was his 26th release in 2022 and his third in less than 48 hours.
The mission was to place the 25th satellite of the Globalstar communications company.
Falcon 9, the rocket that would put it into orbit, is reusable and has two parts, or stages.
The first is made up of "the lower two thirds of the vehicle" and is the part that can be used several times, SpaceX detailed in a video that follows its trajectory around the world in real time.
[NASA and SpaceX successfully launch the Falcon 9 rocket from the United States]
Why is it relevant?
Falcon 9 could have caused the spiral seen in New Zealand and other phenomena around the world observed after its takeoff
, Christopher S. Combs, professor of aerodynamics and mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio, explained to Telemundo News.
"
They are not aliens, it is nothing more
," said Combs, who has a doctorate in aerospace engineering.
For him, what Burns photographed from Stewart Island, "is definitely connected to the SpaceX launch."
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"When there is a launch, that rocket will go around the world on its trajectory because it is placing satellites in orbit," he said.
At different sites, under specific conditions, various phenomena could be noticed, he said.
They are not aliens, it is nothing more.
Christopher S. Combs Professor of Aerodynamics and Engineering
At 12:58 am in Illinois, for example, someone recorded a "smoke ring" that he believed could be "the orbital insertion of the Globalstar FM15 satellite," described the specialized site spaceweather.com.
In North Carolina, David Cortner reported "a red band that appeared approximately 11 minutes after the Falcon 9 took off from Cape Canaveral," detailed the portal directed by astronomer Tony Phillips.
"I noticed this red glow spreading along the flight path a minute or two after the rocket's closest approach," Cortner said.
"It looked like the northern lights,"
he said.
The rocket has "a component full of fuel", when it burns and runs out, that phase or part detaches from the vehicle "and then a second engine starts up and continues forward," Combs explained to Noticias Telemundo.
Combs believes that in New Zealand, the spiral may have been triggered by that specific moment.
"It's got some kind of gas or liquid coming out that's causing it to spin and then spread out and basically become a spiral."
That effect can be used deliberately to straighten or stabilize the rocket, he added.
To see it "you have to be in the right place at the right time where the rocket is in the sunlight, but it's still dark below."
It can be before sunrise or after sunset, so that the “fuel or exhaust gases” are illuminated, as seen when a cloud crosses the sunset.
There is no other astronomical or atmospheric phenomenon with which it could be confused”
Richard Easther Physicist at the University of Auckland, New Zealand
“When the propellant is ejected out the back, what is there is essentially water and carbon dioxide, which briefly forms a cloud in space that is illuminated by the sun,” Richard Easther, a physicist at the University of Auckland, explained in June. , in New Zealand.
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Consulted by Noticias Telemundo, Easther assured that "this is still the most accepted explanation, although it may also be due to the expulsion of unburned fuel from the tanks."
"There is no other astronomical or atmospheric phenomenon with which it could be confused," he clarified.
Although “rare”, he believes that these recur quite frequently.
"I don't recall any similar ones seen in New Zealand
," she said.
Burns hadn't seen anything like that either, but he mentioned that wisps of fire were reported in Norway in 2009 that the Russian Defense Ministry would later admit were caused by a missile that failed after launch.
That is why he thinks that what he saw
“could be the plume of a rocket”
.
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“Once photos of the spiral began to be shared online, some people pointed out that
a SpaceX rocket would have been passing over New Zealand
around the same time,” Burns acknowledged.
In SpaceX's live video it is observed that, just over an hour after Falcon 9 began its trajectory, when the rocket reaches 540 kilometers of altitude and travels at 26,835 kilometers per hour, a voice announces that it has "started the engine of the second stage” and that this part would come off.
The Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Nilesat 301 geostationary communications satellite, lifts off at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on June 8, 2022. John Raoux / AP
At one hour and eight minutes into the transmission, a blue combustion is seen, shortly before it passes near New Zealand.
"SpaceX's Globalstar 2 FM15 likely passed New Zealand around that time
," the New Plymouth Astronomical Society said on its Facebook page on June 19.
"It would have been around 5:30pm, and it would have probably happened again around 90-120 minutes later, which would have been around 7:30pm," he said.
Despite the fact that users discuss their theories about what caused the phenomenon in the comments to their publication, experts and witnesses consulted by Noticias Telemundo consider that
the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket did cause the spirals seen that night
, any other information
lacks evidence
.
