SpaceX rocket lights up skies above Alaska with a blue spiral

A white-ish blue spiral appeared in the skies over Alaska early Saturday morning. According to photographer Todd Salat, who had setup his cameras near the town of Delta Junction between Anchorage and Fairbanks, it began as a bright light on the horizon transformed into a spiral shape as it moved across the sky over several minutes.

“It was a beautiful piece of art in the sky,” Salat told the Anchorage News Daily.

It was created by the upper stage of a Falcon-9 rocket launched a few hours earlier from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Sunlight reflected off vapor, likely vented from unspent fuel, frozen in the cold upper atmosphere can glow brilliantly even late into the night.