A brilliant one bright point surrounded by a strange bluish hair accompanied by a persistent luminous trail it suddenly appeared in the skies of Northern Italy, particularly in Piedmont and Lombardy, sparking amazement and curiosity among the population. The curious sighting happened around 10pm on Friday 1 May, with hundreds of reports on social media from people wondering what they were looking at. Well, it wasn’t an astronomical phenomenon but the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket immediately after releasing into orbit 29 Starlink satellites. It is not the first time this has happened: the phenomenon had already been spotted last March and even before that in 2024.
To be precise, it was about the mission Starlink 10-38launched from Cape Canaveral at 9.10pm Italian time (3.10pm local time). The first stage, as expected, separated a few minutes after launch, while the second stage with the satellites on board continued its eastward trajectory, which just under an hour later took it over Northern Italy while releasing the satellites into low Earth orbit. The bright dot you can see on the left in the video that accompanies this article is real the second stage of the rocket illuminated by the Sun below the horizon.
The hair was blue in color instead fuel ejected. To prepare to return to the ground and be reused, the second stage releases the unused fuel and water vapor still present in the tanks into the upper atmosphere. Due to the low temperature and low pressure up there, these materials expand and freeze, and if the height above the horizon allows it, they form a colorful cloud always illuminated by the Sun below the horizon. Sometimes, if the second stage is rotating, the cloud can appear as a spiral sometimes known as “SpaceX spiral” precisely because it is typical of the launches of Elon Musk’s company.
The bright white trail on the right, however, were the Starlink satellites just rolled out of the rocket. In fact, immediately after launch, the satellites of the SpaceX constellation travel in single file forming a very compact “train”.; subsequently they distance themselves and disperse in low orbit, enriching the constellation of satellites. These were also illuminated by the Sun not visible at the time, and during the sighting they were so bright because they were still at a relatively low altitude, before climbing to their operational altitude.
