Mauna Kea, the highest peak in Hawaii (and one of the highest volcanoes in the world) is one of the best places for astronomical observations on Earth. Recently, a rather unusual phenomenon was registered over it.
Hawaii. Unusual, bright vortex in the sky
In mid-January, a bright, slowly rotating vortex-like object crossed the sky above Mauna Kea. The flying spiral moved relatively quickly over the telescopes installed near the top of Mauna Kea, and after a dozen or so seconds it blurred in the sky.
The phenomenon was recorded by one of the cameras transmitting the image of the starry sky, which is operated by the Japanese Subaru Telescope (located on Mauna Kea) and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. Probably none of the astronomers managed to see the phenomenon with their own eyes.
As the service writes, Ichi Tanaka – a researcher working at the Subaru telescope – was busy at the time with another task, but he learned about the vortex almost immediately from the Internet. The network quickly swarmed with screenshots from a publicly available camera broadcast.
What was the mysterious vortex? It’s SpaceX’s fault
The mysterious vortex, while at first glance may look a bit like a spiral galaxy, was far too bright and moving too fast to be any deep-sky object. Scientists believe that the spiraling trail was left by the gases from the launch of the SpaceX rocket. At a similar time, the company belonging to Elon Musk launched a geolocation satellite into orbit.
This is not the first time SpaceX has caused mysterious phenomena in the sky. (and slightly darker) vortex, which – as it turned out later – was also caused by a SpaceX rocket.
Source: Gazeta
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