A large burning object, believed to be a meteor, has been spotted by people all over Tasmania last night.
The slow-moving ‘ball of fire’ crossed the sky just before midnight and lasted 30-40 seconds.
Many took to social media with videos of their sightings, which ended with a ‘huge thunderous boom’.
Astronomer and Swinburne University Professor Alan Duffy said the display was burning space junk and a “heck of a way to launch national science week”.
“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,” Professor 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.”
At its lowest point, he said the space junk was tens of kilometers above us and confirmed the theoretical possibility of it striking a plane, albeit being “unbelievably unlucky.”
“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.”
