Camera captures night sky spiral

January 30, 2023
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A camera atop Hawaii’s tallest mountain has captured what looks like a spiral swirling through the night sky.

Researchers believe it was from the launch of a military GPS satellite that lifted off earlier on a SpaceX rocket in Florida.

The images were captured on Jan. 18 by a camera at the summit of Mauna Kea outside the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Subaru telescope.

A time-lapse video shows a white orb spreading out and forming a spiral as it moves across the sky. It then fades and disappears.

Ichi Tanaka, a researcher at the Subaru telescope, said he was doing other work that night and didn’t immediately see it. Then a stargazer watching the camera’s live stream on YouTube sent him a screenshot of the spiral using an online messaging platform.