A chamber located on top of the highest mountain in hawaii captured what looks like a swirling spiral in the night sky.
Investigators believe it is due to the release of a military GPS satellite who took off earlier on a rocket SpaceX in Florida.
The images were captured on January 18 by a camera located on top of Mount mauna keaoutside the telescope subaru of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
A time-lapse video shows a white orb that spreads out and forms a spiral while moving across the sky. She then fades out and disappears.
Ichi Tanaka, a Subaru telescope researcher, says he was doing other things that night and didn’t see it immediately. Then a stargazer who was watching the camera’s live feed on YouTube sent him a screenshot of the spiral via an online messaging platform.
“When I opened Slack, that’s what I saw and my jaw dropped,” Tanaka said.
Last April saw a similar spiral, also following a release of SpaceXbut that one was larger and fainter.
SpaceX launched a military satellite on the morning of January 18 from the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida.
The location of the spiral coincided with where the second stage of the rocket was expected to be. Falcon 9 from SpaceX after its launch.
SpaceX did not respond to an email sent Friday seeking comment.
Tanaka said the observatory installed the camera to keep an eye on the surroundings outside the subaru telescope and to share the clear skies of Mauna Kea with the people of Hawaii and the world.
Someone observing the sky in less clear conditions, for example from Tokyo, might not have seen the spiral, he said.
The live broadcast is carried out jointly with the Asahi Shimbun, one of the major Japanese newspapers, and often receives hundreds of viewers. Some tune in to watch meteors streak across the sky.
the top of the mauna kea offers some of the best astronomical conditions on Earth, making it one of the favorite places for the most advanced observatories in the world. The peak is also considered sacred by many native Hawaiians, who view it as a place where the gods dwell.
(With information from AP)
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Source-www.infobae.com