Brits spot mysterious spirals over UK as sky lights up with ‘frozen fuel from SpaceX rocket’
MYSTERIOUS spirals thought to be frozen fuel from a SpaceX rocket have been spotted in the sky above Britain tonight.
The phenomenon was seen by countless people across the UK at around 8pm this evening.
Abbey Nicholls, 25, spotted the mystical pattern above her home in Middleton, Manchester.
She stepped out into her front garden thinking it was a “shooting star” before quickly realising it was something else.
Abbey told The Sun: “It was like a whirlpool of lights floating across the sky.
“It made me feel really strange.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
The mysterious lights have also been spotted from Bristol, Milton Keynes, Stoke-on-Trent, and the coastline of Kent this evening.
Abbey said how she witnessed the strange lights for around 30 seconds before they then “drifted off”.
BBC lead weather presenter Simon King explained the display had been caused by frozen fuel expelled by a recent SpaceX launch.
He said: “Watchers have captured the SpaceX spiral in the skies above the UK this evening after a rocket launch in the US.
“[It was] caused by illuminated frozen fuel expelled from the rocket second stage.”
The Met Office also confirmed the source of the display was “likely” the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch.
It said in a post on X: “We’ve received many reports of an illuminated swirl in the sky this evening.
“This is likely to be caused by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launched earlier today.
“The rocket’s frozen exhaust plume appears to be spinning in the atmosphere and reflecting the sunlight, causing it to appear as a spiral in the sky.”
Dave Garland said he spotted the lights “slowly drifting” over the sky in Yate, Bristol, while Ashley, 39, saw the display off the coast of Kent while he was fishing.
The 39-year-old told The Sun: “It travelled across the sky slowly.
“It disappeared after about five minutes.
“It was the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life.”
Simon Lawton also saw the display from the skies above Stoke-on-Trent this evening.
He described how the “spinning white spiral” appeared at around 8.05pm, following SpaceX’s mission NROL-69 launch at 1.48pm Eastern Time (5.48pm in the UK) earlier today.
Countless others took to social media questioning the strange display in the sky.
One perplexed user on X asked: “Can anyone in the UK tell me what that giant spiral cloud with a bright light in the middle flying through the sky was?”
Another said: “It looked like a cloud moving across the sky but as it came closer it had a light in the middle and a spiral appeared around it.
“Weird – it looks made up but I promise it isn’t”.
Similar displays have been observed from SpaceX launches in the past.