Mystery object lighting up Melbourne sky believed to be space junk

Onlookers have described seeing a huge fireball zoom across the Melbourne sky just after midnight before hearing a thunderous boom.

A mysterious light has been seen flying across the Melbourne sky on Monday night.

Onlookers took to social media to share their sightings of the light show, believed to be a comet or meteor.

A “huge fireball” crossed the night sky for about a minute on Monday, followed by a huge thunderous boom.

Sightings were reported from Mount Buller to Melbourne’s CBD, with punters pulling out their cameras straight away at the extraordinary view.

Astrophysicist Clare Kenyon told the Herald Sun while astronomers aren’t quite sure what the object was, it’s likely it was “man-made” space junk.

“When a piece of space junk – or even something natural like a chunk of space rock – is pulled towards Earth, it’s moving really quickly and then basically slams into the atmosphere, creating a kind of sonic boom,” she said.

Space junk meteor over Richmond Picture: @karmicstewii/ Twitter X

“The friction from Earth’s atmosphere is immense and causes the material to break apart and burn causing lingering bright streaks of light across the sky.

“The colours, size and way the material broke apart seem to indicate that this material is man-made, something synthetic we’ve put up there and not naturally occurring.”

Among the speculations of what the fireball object could’ve been, RMIT science expert Gail Iles suggested it could be part of the Russia Soyuz rocket which launched a navigation satellite at the same time Melburnians saw the space debris, she told 3AW.

Dr Kenyon added space junk plummeting across Earth is quite common, however the “booming” sound that was heard is rare.

“For the booming sound to be heard, the last pieces would have been burning up quite close to the ground – within a few kilometres in altitude,” she said.

“This is relatively uncommon and is probably a result of the large amount of material that re-entered, taking time to fragment and burn up as it raced down to Earth.”

As for whether there’d be debris on the ground, Dr Kenyon said space junk rarely makes it to the ground and if it does reach Earth’s surface, it usually ends up in the ocean.

Meanwhile, 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.

A huge fireball was spotted zooming across the Melbourne sky.

Experts believe it to be space junk.

“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.”

What an amazing sight over Richmond 💫 I don't know if #Meteor#Comet or #SpaceJunk#Melbournepic.twitter.com/8SHbweU2qK

— Stewart Mason (@karmicstewii) August 7, 2023

Space junk lights up the skies over Melbourne. pic.twitter.com/Oaok47VVbh

— mark davidson (@markjdavidson) 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.

Some onlookers also reported hearing a loud bang.

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.”

Dr Kenyon added the biggest risk is to other satellites and spacecraft in orbit.

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