A “loud boom” followed by a mystery light streaked across Melbourne skies overnight – but what exactly was it?
Melburnians who awoke from the bang retreated outside to see the spectacle which has been described as a comet, meteor and space junk.
Stay up-to-date on the latest news with The National Briefing – keeping you in the loop with news as it hits:
Australian National university’s Dr Brad Tucker says it was most likely space junk.
“There is some a bit of potentially an old rocket that re-entered over the skies and what happens is as is object re-enters it kind of slowly moves across the sky,” Dr Tucker said.
“It starts to fragment, and bit start to fall to the ground usually. A meteor, you get this very bluey green colours but also because of the densities in the speeds the meteor sometimes breaks apart or explodes which is usually the bright flash people see.
“But with the case that we saw over Victoria last night that bits are really slowly moving down so they actually break apart as they are entering the Earth’s atmosphere.”
Witnesses of the event flocked to social media to weigh in on what they thought the bright light was.
“Um excuse me, I just saw a meteor? I was literally just going to get a Biscoff shake and saw the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” one wrote.
“Absolutely breathtaking scenes in Melbourne’s sky… Stunning rays of light coming from space junk or the transformers ship – to each his own,” another wrote.