It was neither a UFO nor a sign from Queen Elizabeth II. On the night of this Wednesday, residents of Scotland, Northern Ireland and even the north of England could see a ball of fire cross the sky for about twenty seconds. as reported The Guardianthe UK Weather Network has received almost 800 reports on this.
Many videos and images have been posted on social media, with some netizens wondering, even worrying, about the phenomenon. Theories and attempts at explanation. they have multiplied.
A Starlink satellite
However, fears, or hopes, were quickly swept away. If this hasn’t been fully verified yet, it looks like this is again a device from Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. While many thought it was a meteorite, UK Weather Network astronomer John Maclean told the guardian which was probably space debris because it was moving too slowly to be a meteorite.
According to him and other researchers, the most likely cause was a SpaceX Starlink satellite. Thousands of them have been designed to form a constellation of satellites that will be placed in orbit around the Earth, in order to provide an Internet connection.
John Maclean explained that Starlink satellites “go out of orbit quite regularly, as they only have a limited lifespan in space.”
“We expect more than 40,000 satellites in the next few years. Soon, one in five objects you see in the sky at night could be a satellite,” he laments. In fact, if these debris are not dangerous, they are a source of inconvenience and inconvenience for astronomical observations.
Source: BFM TV
