The truth is out there … it just wasn’t as thrilling as hoped.
A massive, glowing spiral that illuminated the skies over the UK on Monday evening and sparked speculation of an alien encounter is believed to have been caused by a SpaceX rocket.
Initially thought by some to be an aircraft or extraterrestrial activity, the growing swirl was visible for several minutes across Britain and has now been attributed to a launch at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, launched a mission for the US government just before 1:50 pm local time (17:50 GMT), and it is understood that the Falcon 9 rocket’s frozen exhaust plume resulted in the display.
The Met Office stated on social media platform X: “The rocket’s frozen exhaust plume appears to be spinning in the atmosphere and reflecting sunlight, causing it to appear as a spiral in the sky.”
Lord Dover, a senior technical officer at the University of Hertfordshire’s Bayfordbury Observatory, stated that the spiral was visible for approximately 10 minutes from 7:52 pm, traveling across the sky before disappearing over the horizon.
“(The SpaceX) rocket… dumped fuel in the upper atmosphere to shed weight before returning to Earth,” he explained.
“This fuel formed an expanding, swirling cloud that developed into a giant spiral shape as it traveled over the Atlantic.”
“These sightings are becoming more common in some parts of the world, but it’s still unusual for rocket launches to be visible like this from the UK,” he added.
The celestial display was witnessed across much of Europe, with hundreds sharing footage and imagery on social media.
Steven Hall told the BBC that while taking out his bins in Suffolk, he saw a “huge Catherine wheel which appeared to have its own atmosphere around it.”
He further stated, “It did cross my mind, is this an unexplained, unidentified flying object?”
Furthermore, Dave from Bristol described seeing the blue spiral as “a plane with its headlight on.”
He continued, “It suddenly went blurry, and I thought, ‘Oh, it’s gone into cloud,’ but then realized there weren’t any clouds.”
“I watched this fuzzy light for about a minute, and then all of a sudden it started shooting out these spiral arms and spinning,” he recalled.
“I realized straight away it was SpaceX because I’ve seen it so much on YouTube, but I can totally see how others would have been weirded out by it – it really did look alien.”
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/25/alien-hopes-crash-to-earth-glowing-spiral-uk-spacex-rocket
