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‘I might be hallucinating;’ What was the blue swirl in the sky last weekend?

A spiral in the sky that seemed to be embedded in the Northern lights had people in Alaska and Canada who saw it Saturday wondering about the celestial pattern, according to The Associated Press.

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The light blue spiral resembling a galaxy to some appeared mixed in the aurora for a few minutes early Saturday.

While some on social media wanted to link it to an alien invasion, the cause of the swirl had an Earthly origin.

The spiral was made from fuel released from a SpaceX rocket that launched from California about three hours before the spiral appeared, according to space physicist Don Hampton, a research associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute who spoke to the AP.

“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.”

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.

A couple driving near Eagle Plains, Yukon, told the Canadian Broadcast Company that they were not sure what they were seeing.

Talia MacDonald, along with her companion Paul, spotted the swirl early Saturday morning on the remote Dempster Highway in northern Yukon.

“It was a bit spooky because we were the only ones on the highway.”

McDonald said Paul, who was driving, woke her up and said, “‘You need to look at this, because I feel like I might be hallucinating,’” MacDonald said.

The spiral only lasted in the sky for a short time.