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\n The flash of light has been identified as a Chinese rocket launch that traveled over Australia as it headed into orbit. Image: Facebook (Townsville Storms)<\/p>\n
A strange object described as looking like a ‘space jellyfish’ caught the attention of Hunter residents as it streaked across the night sky on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The flying object, surrounded by a veil of striking blue and white light, was spotted by hundreds of stargazers across Queensland and northern NSW about 7pm on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The celestial sighting sent internet sleuths into action, as they shared images in an attempt to figure out its source.<\/p>\n
Ashleigh Keen said she was walking her dog with her partner in Adamstown when they saw a flash in the sky.<\/p>\n
“It was unexpected. We weren’t looking for anything, just out for a walk. It happened so quickly,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It was a strange triangular shape and it was moving so fast.<\/p>\n
“My partner saw it and said ‘quick record it’, because we didn’t know what it was.<\/p>\n
“At first I thought it could be a plane crashing because it looked like there was smoke coming off the back of it.<\/p>\n
“Then we were convinced it was a meteor coming down through the Earth’s atmosphere.”<\/p>\n
Ms Keen said the bright light travelled across the sky for about 30 to 40 seconds before “fizzing out” into the distance.<\/p>\n
“We put the video up on social media because we thought someone might be able to tell us what it was,” she said.<\/p>\n
“There was obviously a lot of speculation about aliens and people having fun with it but lots of people started saying it was a Chinese rocket.<\/p>\n
“That made a lot more sense, but was also interesting itself, because why would a Chinese rocket be flying over Australia?”<\/p>\n
As similar videos and pictures appeared from across the east coast the source was quickly identified as the Chinese Zhuque 2E Block 2 rocket launched from a satellite launch centre in northern China about 6.20pm on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The president of the Newcastle Astronomical Society, Mark Anderson, said it was uncommon for Chinese rockets to travel on a trajectory over Australia.<\/p>\n
\n The flash of light has been identified as a Chinese rocket launch that traveled over Australia as it headed into orbit. Image: Facebook (Townsville Storms)<\/p>\n
“Launches usually occur closer to the equator, so it is unusual for one of their launches to be seen over Australia,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Anderson said similar launches were becoming more common around the world, but it was still rare to be able to see them in Australia.<\/p>\n
“Most of the operations are happening out of the US.”<\/p>\n
He said that, over the past few years, Australia had slowly been pushing for sovereign launch capacity, with possible sites in Queensland earmarked.<\/p>\n
Mr Anderson said the odd shape seen around the rocket could be the reflections of light passing through the exhaust gases.<\/p>\n
“It is certainly an interesting shape, and it could be because the rocket is dumping additional fuel as it leaves the atmosphere,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A strange object described as looking like a ‘space jellyfish’ caught the attention of Hunter residents as it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[879,49,48,19534,19537,19533,44,19535,7232,19536,66,8798,323,883],"class_list":["post-726995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-breaking-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-daily-news","tag-global-news","tag-inkl","tag-news","tag-news-app","tag-news-headlines","tag-news-today","tag-science","tag-today-news","tag-wildlife","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}