Hey! Ich habe heute Nacht das Nordlicht beobachtet und diese seltsame Gestalt über den Himmel fliegen sehen. Es begann als seltsame Kugel, gefolgt von einer seltsamen Spur. Meine beste Vermutung ist, dass es ein Satellit ist, der die Aurora stört? Wenn Sie wissen, was es ist, sagen Sie mir bitte, dass ich sehr neugierig bin! Entschuldigung, dass die Fotos nicht großartig sind, sie stammen nur von meiner iPhone-Kamera
https://i.redd.it/bsir3lbuvrcg1.jpeg
12 Kommentare
It’s a rocket launch. Where are you located?
This is the gas cloud from a rocket upper stage doing an orbital manoeuvre.
Definitely a rocket launch. Not interfering with the aurora, it’s just how rocket launches work. And satellites are too high up to interfere, even if that were possible.
Looks like the cloud that forms when a Falcon 9 stages and the booster starts its return flight.
These sort of clouds are generally created by launch vehicles venting gasses or fuel. High in the upper atmosphere, the material can spread out a great deal. You can see them usually because of the fact that the cloud is high enough to be illuminated by sunlight.
Could be this rocket: [Link](https://www.rocketlaunch.live/launch/pandora)
To expand on the other answers, it’s a rocket launch but in rare lighting conditions.
If the plume isn’t in the sunlight, it’s too dark to see with the naked eye. If it’s lit up but it’s also daylight on the ground, it’s still not going to be bright enough to see relative to the ambient lighting.
You only get this phenomenon of a visible plume just after sunset or just before sunrise, if the launch is on the correct side of the planet so that the rocket is lit by the sun, but it’s still dark on the ground where the observer is.
Do you think that’s satellite-generated? lol, I saw the same in polar dawn aurora, they’re clouds 😍
I think it is actually of scientific interest how these gases could interact with northern lights, as they locally of course to change the composition of the atmosphere. There were not many observations in the past of these gases being introduced while being in an active aurora region, and being observable due to cloud cover. But I guess with better camera quality this would have been of more interest
100% rocket launch. It looks like its a stage separation.
I saw it as well, but the wide part of the cone was in front so I thought it was a DA-42 training plane from Bardufoss with it’s lights on (as per the one in the area according to Flightradar24).
Took some video, but nothing noteworthy.
Saw this tonight at around 17:30 CET. ChatGPT thinks that this is the Falcon 9 “Twilight” rideshare mission (NASA’s Pandora + smallsats) upper-stage fuel dump.
SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 Twilight rideshare mission from Vandenberg SFB on 11 January 2026 at 13:44 UTC (14:44 CET).
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/01/spacexs-twilight-rideshare-mission-vandenberg/