Every now and then the skies above Tenerife produce something a little unusual.
That’s exactly what happened on Thursday night, when a strange luminous spiral appeared in the sky, catching the attention of people looking out over the Atlantic.
Photographer Eduardo García managed to capture the moment from his balcony in Los Gigantes, in Santiago del Teide. According to García, it was a rare and difficult phenomenon to see, and he was lucky enough to have his camera ready while watching the sky.
The images show a bright spiral shape slowly forming in the atmosphere, which naturally sparked plenty of curiosity.
For a moment, some people even wondered if it might be something a little more mysterious.
But the explanation is actually much simpler.
The spiral effect was caused by a Falcon 9 rocket, which had launched earlier. When the rocket’s second stage releases excess fuel into the upper atmosphere, the gases expand and, combined with the rocket’s rotation manoeuvres, create a circular or spiral formation that becomes visible from Earth.
While rocket launches are becoming more common these days, seeing this type of formation from the Canary Islands isn’t something that happens very often, which explains why it surprised so many people who spotted it.
Still… for a few minutes at least, it must have looked pretty impressive hanging there in the night sky.