Mysterious light seen in Aussie night sky likely originated from Russia

The unexpected astronomy event was captured by witnesses across the state, from Melbourne CBD to Mount Buller, with some claiming they also heard a ‘boom’ and felt the ground shake.

The Australian Space Agency has this afternoon announced it was “likely the remnants of a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere”.

“Launch of the Soyuz-2 rocket occurred from Plesetsk Cosmodrome earlier in the evening. According to Russian authorities the launch placed a new generation ‘GLONASS-K2’ global navigation satellite into orbit,” the space agency said via a statement.

“This launch was notified and remnants of the rocket were planned to safely re-enter the atmosphere into the ocean off the south-east coast of Tasmania.”

With speculation the soaring light was a meteor earlier, Swinburne University astronomer Alan Duffy told 3AW he would tip that “the quite extraordinary sight” was caused by space junk.

“What we’re seeing is a large flash of light extended…It burns up for 30-40 seconds. It’s breaking up. All of that is telling me that is space junk. That is not a small piece of natural occurring rock in space – a meteor,” he said.

“It’s something very large, probably a couple of tonnes.

Read Related Also: Nestor Cortes’ brilliant return could not have come at a better time for Yankees

”In some of the videos you can even see that there are colours in those flashing burning up pieces.

The light appeared to be much closer to the earth than other astronomy events, but Duffy said it would “tens of kilometres above” the ground at least.

He said reports that people had heard a ‘loud bang’, believed to be a sonic boom, was “something extraordinary”.

“Some of those pieces must have been very dense to make it to the surface.”

In terms of reports of the ground shaking, Geoscience Australia identified seismic signals near north-west Melbourne, which normally relate to earthquakes.