Right on cue with the airing of the Westall ’66 documentary last night, early risers on the east coast of Australia this morning were greeted with another instance of a ‘spiral UFO’, somewhat similar to the Norwegian spiral ‘UFO’ we reported on late last year. Here’s video uploaded to YouTube, taken around 5am this morning:
In the Norwegian case, it seems the spiral was almost certainly created by a malfunctioning booster during the launch of a Russian missile. And in this case, it’s likely again that the culprit is the launch of a rocket – this time, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 which successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at around 4.45am AEST this morning, pretty much the same time this new ‘UFO’ was spotted. In the video highlights of the launch (embedded below), you can also see that just before shutdown in orbit (4:53am AEST) the tail of the rocket seems to be gyrating somewhat, which would give the look of a spiraling light from Earth.
I’m sure there’ll be more qualified technical analysis of the whole thing in quick time, but wanted to note this for anybody seeing the news for the first time just now.
Thanks to Rick for the heads-up.
Update: Quite a few of the reports I’m seeing now from Australians are saying it was just before 6am, not around 5am. Pretty sure I’ve got the timezone conversion correct (18:45 UT = 4.45am AEST) – anybody want to correct me? Is it possible the spiral ‘UFO’ is a separated stage re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere?