Aussies living hundreds of kilometres away from one another were greeted by the same mysterious sight on Tuesday night.
Captured by dozens of stunned onlookers in NSW and Queensland, the object barrelling through the sky was characterised by a brilliant mix of blue and white light.
Social media lit up as the object made its way across Aussie skies, with sightings as far northwest as Mount Isa and as far to the south as Tumut, just west of Canberra.
A pair of women based in Queensland’s Gympie region documented their sighting.
“What I’m seeing is a white head, and it’s pushing through and it’s got this tail and then coming off it is this veil of blue light and white mist behind it,” one of them says as the other films.
“It’s just freaking awesome … what the hell was that?”
The object was a rocket launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northern China about 5.20pm Australian time on Tuesday.
About 20 minutes later, the rocket became visible over Queensland, according to University of Southern Queensland astrophysicist Jonti Horner.
Speaking to the ABC, Professor Horner said the reason the rocket was so clearly visible was because its height allowed it to be lit by the sun even though people on the ground were experiencing darkness of the early evening.
“It got up to orbital altitude and it released some gas,” Professor Horner said.
“This cloud of gas was illuminated by the sun. Even though it was dark at ground level, this was high enough to be in sunlight.
“And so you’ve got this cloud of gas highlighted moving across the sky as this rocket launch passed overhead.”
Turkish state media company Anadol Ajansi said the rocket had been carrying a pair of satellites named Spacesail DTC01 and China Mobile 02, which were successfully sent into orbit.
The rocket, named Zhuque-2E Y6, is part of a series of rockets “developed for commercial satellite missions”, according to Chinese authorities.
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