Watch: Sky camera timelapse captures odd baby blue spiral in Alaska night sky

Sometimes rockets have fuel that needs to be jettisoned, said space physicist Don Hampton, a research associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

As if the northern lights weren’t a spectacle enough, a strange and mysterious spiral appeared in the Alaska sky over the weekend.

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“When they do that at high altitudes, that fuel turns into ice,” he said. “And if it happens to be in the sunlight, when you’re in the darkness on the ground, you can see it as a sort of big cloud, and sometimes it’s swirly.” While not a common sight, Hampton said he’s seen such occurrences about three times.

The appearance of the swirl was caught in time-lapse on the Geophysical Institute’s all-sky camera and shared widely. “It created a bit of an Internet storm with that spiral,” Hampton said.

Photographers out for the northern lights show also posted their photos on social media.

The rocket that took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Friday night about 25 satellites as its payload. It was a polar launch, which made it visible over a large swath of Alaska.

“The timing was right they had done a some sort of fuel dump at that time, and we got that really cool looking spiral thing,” he said.

And while it looked like a galaxy going over Alaska, he assures it wasn’t. “I can tell you it’s not a galaxy,” he said. “It’s just water vapour reflecting sunlight.”