Spirals of blue light in New Zealand night sky leave stargazers ‘kind of freaking out’

New Zealand stargazers were left perplexed and awed by the strange light formations in the night sky.

Alasdair Burns received a text from a friend that said to look at the sky. It was obvious what he was talking about as soon as we went outside.

There was a blue spiral of light in the dark. Burns said it looked like an enormous spiral galaxy floating in the sky. I felt quite an eerie feeling.

Burns took a few pictures of the lights with his phone. We knocked on the doors of our neighbours to get them out. There were five of us, all out on our veranda, looking up and just kind of freaked out.

The country's astronomy groups lit up with people posting photographs and questions about the phenomenon, which was visible from most of the South Island. There were many theories, from alien beings to foreign rockets.

One stargazer said that they had premonition from the black hole. The person commented that aliens were at it again.

Prof Richard Easther said that the phenomenon was probably a little more mundane.

Sometimes there were clouds of nature when a rocket carried a satellite into the sky.

Easther said that when the propellant is ejected out the back, there is water and carbon dioxide in the sky. The geometry of the satellite, as well as the way that we are sitting relative to the sun, was just right to produce these crazy looking clouds that were visible from the South Island.

Easther said it was likely the Globalstar launch that took place on Sunday.

In 2009, when a Russian missile launch caused huge blue spirals over Norway, Burns had read about it. He said it was a challenging sight even though he knew the likely source. We had never seen that before. It was amazing.