A bright, shiny mysterious spot of light in the night sky bewildered many in the North-East region of Australia on Monday night.
Several people in Queensland, Northern Territory and New South Wales shared pictures of this bright mysterious spot in the sky on social media and wondered what it was?
Shauna Royes was one of them. She was having dinner at the Julia Creek caravan park in remote north-west Queensland about 7.30pm on Monday night when she spotted the bright spot in the sky.
"It was quite a bright, unusual light with a tail on it. It was travelling north-east and we watched it for probably two or three minutes before it faded out,” Ms Royes told ABC.
"We had no idea what it was. It was really unusual."
She wasn’t alone. Regina Bernard was driving when she spotted the big flash blue light.
Source: Facebook/ABC North West
“Seen out of Kununurra in the Kimberley, it felt so close for it lite up the hills so bright and only for 2-3 seconds we thought it was lightning that's how bright it lite up the hills!!” she wrote in her comment on Facebook.
‘I don’t know,’ Yasmine is heard replying in the video clearly showing the visible bright blue spot in the sky.
The phenomenon got many excited. Some thought it was an alien.
‘I thought it was a UFO so I tried to shoot it with my nurf gun,’ wrote Jacob Blunt.
But it was no alien nor a meteor or a comet according to Professor Jonathan Horner, who teaches Astrophysics at the University of South Queensland.
Source: Facebook: ABC NORTH WEST
“Once I saw the footage (the photos and the video) it was immediately obvious this wasn’t a meteor or comet - neither of those would look and behave at all like this. And the resemblance to the images from Starman was so strong it seemed really likely that this was something space-based - a spacecraft changing orbit, essentially,” Professor Horner told SBS Hindi.
Many who saw the phenomenon and the online posts thought it was India’s mission to Moon – Chandrayaan-2 that had been successfully launched just minutes earlier in India.
“The conclusion that it was India’s Moon mission was actually something that was reached widely by the internet - lots of people pointed out that the Indian mission launched just 17 minutes before the bright light was seen - and that there was a scheduled burn that occurred at 7:29 pm (our time) - bang on the right time and in the right place to be what was observed from the ground,” says Professor Horner.
While the timing made it seem logical that it could be Chandrayaan-2, space expert Dr Morris Jones says it could not have been India’s mission to Moon.
“I am not convinced that the lights were connected to the Indian Moon launch. I am not sure what caused the lights, but I do not think it was the Indian launch. The Indian rocket had finished its burn and the spacecraft had separated from it over the Indian Ocean. This was nowhere near the sightings,” Dr Jones told SBS Hindi.
Then what was it that the Australians witnessed?
Indians cheer and celebrate as Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launches orbiter vehicle 'Chandrayaan-2', India's first moon lander and rover mission. Source: Getty Images
According to one astronomer, it was ‘venting of residual propellant’.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics on Twitter pointed out he suspected it was not ‘the burn but the venting of residual LOX/LH2 propellant.’
So while we have some logical arguments and explanations, we still cannot know for sure what exactly it was.
India’s Chandrayaan-2 was launched on Monday and is expected to reach Moon’s South Pole on September 7 2019.
Learn more about India's mission to the Moon:
Chandrayaan-2: India gears up to launch their Moon mission
