Weird glowing orb spotted spiralling in sky across UK – Manchester Evening News

A weird glowing orb was spotted spiralling across the sky in the UK on Monday night (March 24).
Social media was awash with posts about the strange circular light which shone across Greater Manchester, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire and other parts of the UK.
Pictures and videos shared online showed the bright light which was seen to be 'spinning' across the night sky. The beam was noticed by people who took to X and Facebook to question what it was.
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"Anyone else just see this in the sky? It just kept spinning," posted one person from Ashton-under-Lyne on Facebook. Another person in Horwich, Bolton, posted: "Anyone else seen this tonight it was absolutely beautiful flying over Horwich."
Images were also posted on Radcliffe group followed by a post which read: "Has anyone else just seen this over Radcliffe in the sky because me and the kids are freaked out.
"What have we just seen??? It was moving and then faded away after about 2 mins and there were other small what looked like stars moving around it too."
As a person in Bredbury, Stockport, wrote: "Did anyone else just see this swirling thing in the sky? It was spinning round and then went off into the distance."
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Another resident in Denton, in Tameside, questioned: "Anyone seen the strange moving objects in the sky? 8pm. One bright thing with white misty rings round it. Moving slow for ages then completely disappeared."
A reader from Wardle, in Rochdale, said: "A strange bright light with swirls and halo glow around it appeared over Wardle tonight at roughly 19:55.
"It firstly seems to come towards us and then moved away across the sky until out of sight."
"I thought it was a plane but it appeared too slow," someone in Stalybridge penned online. "Not as noisy and seemed to light up the sky like there were clouds even though the stars are visible."
It seemed the orb linked with the taking off of the Space X US spy satellite on Monday (March 24) and is the most plausible cause.
A Falcon 9 rocket rose off a pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station shortly after 1.45pm on the NROL-69 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
A similar phenomenon was witnessed in 2023 when a similar spiral was spotted over parts of the USA, which had been caused by excess fuel being released from a SpaceX rocket that launched from California hours earlier.
The spiral anomaly occurred when the rocket vented excess fuel which then froze and reflected the sunlight.
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