Camera captures night sky spiral after SpaceX rocket launch

By AUDREY McAVOY
Associated Press

HONOLULU (AP) — A camera atop Hawaii’s tallest mountain has captured what looks like a spiral swirling through the night sky. Researchers believe it was from the launch of a military GPS satellite, that lifted off earlier on a SpaceX rocket in Florida. The images were captured on Jan. 18 by a camera at the summit of Mauna Kea outside the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Subaru telescope. A time-lapse video shows a white orb spreading out and forming a spiral as it moves across the sky. The location of the spiral matches where the second stage of the SpaceX rocket was expected to be after launch.