Did you see a strange, spiral-shaped, glowing cloud-like object in the night sky last night, Monday 24 March?
We've woken up to a flurry of emails in our inbox from stargazers across the UK and Ireland, who spotted β and photographed β the strange spiral formation in the night sky.
At first glance, the strange shape appears not dissimilar to distant spiral galaxies, or even the dusty protoplanetary discs that form around newborn stars.
But of course, it's much too big and too easily seen with the naked eye to be a deep-sky object like this.
The UK Met Office has explained in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that the object in question is part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
"This is likely to be caused by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launched earlier today," the Met Office said in its post.
"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."
Sure enough, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched at 01:48 ET on 24 March from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA.
The spiral shape is caused when rocket fuel is ejected from the upper stages of the Falcon 9 during its journey to Earth orbit.
Unlike older single-use rockets, the Falcon 9 is reusable and, after launching into space, it releases its payload (i.e. the load it's carrying into space such as a satellite, for example).
That payload continues into Earth orbit and the rocket returns to Earth.
It ejects leftover fuel, which freezes instantly at such high altitude. The rocket's rapid rotation causes the frozen fuel to form a spiral pattern.
You can see it in the night sky because this frozen fuel reflects sunlight back towards Earth.
Thanks to everyone who sent in their images of this strange spiral cloud in the night sky last night.
You can see some of the best in our gallery below.
If you saw the strange spiral cloud, send us your images!
