Mysterious light show over South Australian skies

A huge mysterious fireball spotted over SA’s skies left onlookers wondering what in the universe it could be. Now the Australian Space Agency has solved the mystery.

A mysterious light seen lighting up the skies in Victoria has also been spotted in various parts of South Australia.

Social media users took to Facebook and posted that they had seen the light pass over Glossop to Loxton and closer to Adelaide at Glenelg, over Main North Rd, and in the southern suburbs, including Christies Beach.

The unusual light, that looked like a comet or meteor, streaked across the night sky for about a minute on Monday.

Some onlookers in Victoria reported a loud bang.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Australian Space Agency (ASA) said the “flashes of light” were likely “remnants of a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere”.

Fireball over Melbourne on Monday night

Fireball over Melbourne on Monday night

“Launch of the Soyuz-2 rocket occurred from Plesetsk Cosmodrome earlier in the evening,” they said in the statement.

“According to Russian authorities the launch placed a new generation ‘GLONASS-K2’ global navigation satellite into orbit.

“This launch was notified and remnants of the rocket were planned to safely re-enter the atmosphere into the ocean off the southeast coast of Tasmania.

ASA said they would continue monitoring the outcomes of this re-entry with their Government partners.

Astronomer at Swinburne University Professor Alan Duffy said it was a “heck of a way to launch national science week” and confirmed the fantastic display was burning space junk.

“What we’re seeing is a large flash of light extended and it burns up, you can see in the videos it is really quite extraordinary,” Prof Duffy told 3AW.

“You can see it’s breaking up – all of that is telling me it is space junk, it is not a small piece of naturally occurring rock in space.

“The fact that you can see something as bright for as long, that breaks up and even the pieces that are breaking up are themselves burning up brightly – all of that means that it is something very large, probably a couple of tonnes.”

Large #meteor seen over Adelaide (left) and Melbourne (right) at about 12:30am CST. pic.twitter.com/dPTXTeWWhn

— xaussiex 🇦🇺 (@xaussiextwit) August 7, 2023

He said despite appearing very close to home, the space junk was tens of kilometres above us even at its lowest point.

Professor Duffy confirmed while it would be “unbelievably unlucky”, space junk could, in theory, hit a plane.

“When you get pieces of junk re-entering or even rockets launching they have a hold on all aircraft in the area.

“This was an unexpected re-entry and no-one would have been able to be warned.”

Prof Duffy encouraged onlookers to log their sightings in the “Fireballs in the Sky” application to assist scientists to track down the junk.

Did you see the unusual lights pass over? Send your photos to [e-mail]

Originally published as Mysterious light show over South Australian skies