Blue swirl in sky spurs sighting reports across Western Pa. and beyond

National Weather Service staff at its Moon office got a few odd calls Tuesday night about a strange-looking blue swirl moving across the sky.

“We had a couple of calls on the overnight shift,” said NWS Meteorologist Andrew Kienzle.

The swirl was created by a SpaceX rocket launch, experts said. The company’s Falcon 9 rocket launched on Tuesday from the Vandenburg Space Force Base in California, with a payload of 24 Starlink satellites.

The United Kingdom’s Met Office released a statement in response to sighting reports across Europe stating that the spiral was caused by the rocket’s “frozen exhaust plume… spinning in the atmosphere and reflecting the sunlight, causing it to appear as a spiral in the sky.”

In this time-lapse video, the spiral almost doesn’t seem real.

However SpaceX was not the only rocket company sending things to space yesterday. United Launch Alliance launched its Vulcan rocket on Tuesday from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

So while at least one social media user was speculating that he’d spotted a UFO in the skies over Bethany Beach, Del., other users guessed he was seeing the ULA Vulcan rocket making its way into space.

UFO. Bethany Beach, Delaware.

8/12/25 10:32 PM pic.twitter.com/3gqkHyu8s6

— Dr. D Will (@DoctorDWill) August 13, 2025

Kienzle said when NWS officials receive these types of reported sightings, “we look at who’s launching rockets and where,” he said. “It’s not always U.S.-based rockets, sometimes the European Union or Russia will also launch rockets. And so we look at what’s going on in the space world.”

Who sees the frozen fuel spiral depends on when a rocket launch happens, and what trajectory it takes across the sky.

“Certainly you need clear conditions and that’s what we had last night,” Kienzle said. “People were reporting it here and I saw reports of people reporting it as far north as Vermont and as far west as Nebraska.”

There was certainly no lack of social media speculation.

my daughter claims to have seen an orb a few minutes ago in central maine, over a lake. pic.twitter.com/mP8xEsAAui

— dam blue (@BeulerDam) August 13, 2025

It isn’t the first time this type of sighting has happened. In March, Europeans reported a blue spiral in the sky which was the result of another SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch. Alaskans did the same following a Falcon 9 launch in 2023:

Andy Vermaut shares:SpaceX launch leaves mysterious blue spiral amid northern lights in Alaska night sky: The appearance of the swirl was caught in time-lapse on the Geophysical Institute’s all-sky camera and shared widely. https://t.co/2L6DMvwLS8 Thank you. pic.twitter.com/LqTLq7VYbw

— Andy Vermaut (@AndyVermaut) April 18, 2023