An bright white spiral lit up Norway's sky on Wednesday morning, with one expert suspecting the light show was created by a malfunctioning Russian missile spinning out of control.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its navy launched a ballistic missile from a submarine on the same day of the event but declined to connect the launch with the Norway light, according to CNN.

Unstable work of the engine of the [missile's] third stage was detected by the monitoring systems, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a released statement to CNN. The causes of the technical error are being established by a state commission.

A missile research expert in the U.S. believes that the missile explanation makes the most sense.

“I looked at the video and my first thought was it’s surprising how pretty it is,” said William Dimpfl, a senior research scientist at the Aeorospace Corporation, according to the Christian Examiner.

“But I had an understanding very quickly of what was going on. There’s nothing surprising in (the video).”

He says the spiral is an illuminated solid propellent motor that generates a pinwheel.

One Youtube user with knowledge about creating three dimensional models posted his computer generated visualization, in an attempt to explain the event.

See video of the event below from CBS news:
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