The Subaru Telescope Team on Mauna Kea, Hawaii is usually busy with discoveries in outer space. But last weekend, they found a strange apparition in the sky that was mistaken for a UFO.
The apparition, which looks like a whirlpool in space, was caught on camera on April 17. The video of the sighting comes from the Subaru-Asahi Star Camera, a collaborative project between the Subaru Telescope and Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun that features a livestream of the night sky.
The vortex appears in the video from the left and moves to the center of the screen before slowly disappearing into the horizon. Several telescopes at the Mauna Kea Observatory facility are also seen in the video.
In the description, the Subaru Telescope team joked about keeping the origin of the UFO sighting a secret, but they explained that the sighting was part of the second stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket that was falling.
The sighting did appear not long after SpaceX launched a spy satellite belonging to the U.S. The National Reconnaissance Office of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on April 17, 2022.
The first stage of the reusable Falcon 9 rocket returned to Earth and landed on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. While the second stage continues to fly to bring its payload into orbit.
This second stage is disposable, and after delivering the payload to its destination, this second stage will fall naturally and burn when it enters Earth's atmosphere.
Scientist Marco Langbroek also discussed why when falling on the second stage it looked like a whirlpool. It turns out that this spiral shape is often seen when the Falcon 9 rocket releases its propellant, as quoted from Cnet, Saturday (23/4/2022).
The Subaru Telescope Team said sightings of a whirlpool like this were rare. But given that SpaceX plans to launch dozens of missions this year, it looks like unique sights like this will be appearing in the sky more and more often.
