The cause of the mysterious galaxy-shaped phenomena that appeared in the skies over New Zealand has been revealed.
On Sunday evening, at around 7.30 pm, an alien-looking plume of light appeared across New Zealand and left the spectators baffled.
Scientists, however, have now confirmed that the spectacular sight is not a result of alien technology or a portal to another dimension.
As it happens, the glowing swirl was caused by Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 as the rocket vented its fuel and blasted into space.
The vapor trail left behind by the rocket’s fuel reflected sunlight which gave it the appearance of a spiral galaxy before dispersing and disappearing from view.
According to the reports, the swirl could first be spotted in the sky over Nelson which lies in the north of New Zealand’s south island. It later moved southward and was spotted nearly 500 miles away at Stewart Island.
“It was absolutely bizarre. It was like a massive spiral. And it very, very slowly, serenely moving across the night sky and then just sort of dissipating as it went,” one witness, Alasdair Burns, said in an interview with Stuff.
“We quickly banged on the doors of all our neighbors to get them out as well.
“And so there were about five of us, all out on our shared veranda looking up and just kind of, well, freaking out just a little bit.”
Another stargazer from Māpua said she thought the “fascinating” phenomena looked like a star or a planet.
“It looked like a planet or star. It was just a white dot with a tiny spiral. And within 10 minutes it had traversed half the sky and the spiral had grown three times in size,” Augustine Matthews said.
“It wasn’t blinking or twinkling, and it was moving fairly fast… so fascinating.”
While some people were quick to suggest that extraterrestrial forces might have played a role in the glowing swirl, space agencies confirmed SpaceX was behind the phenomena.
“The spiral that was seen in the sky tonight around 7:30 pm was most likely a fuel dump or exhaust plume from a SpaceX rocket launch,” New Plymouth Astronomical Society stated.
“Similar effects have been seen before, and SpaceX’s Globalstar 2 FM15 was likely to have passed New Zealand around that time.”
Spaceflight Now added: “SpaceX hauled a Globalstar communications satellite into orbit early Sunday from Cape Canaveral, pulling off the third Falcon 9 rocket flight in 36 hours, the fastest sequence of three missions by any commercial launch company in history.”
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