A mysterious glowing object with a fiery tail streaking across the night sky has left residents puzzled after it was spotted in several parts of Malaysia, including Langkawi, Pahang and Johor, on Wednesday night.
The sightings attracted attention on social media, with several users sharing videos and accounts of the object moving rapidly across the sky before disappearing from view.
A Threads user, @juliaoei, said she witnessed the phenomenon at around 9.40pm in Kuah, Langkawi.
Another user, @Kimikimo_95, reported seeing the same occurrence from their home in Kuantan, Pahang, at about 8.45pm.
The user said their child initially mistook the object for an aeroplane before realising that it was moving unusually fast and appeared to be glowing as though it was on fire.
Meanwhile, another user, @abdsalamjr, claimed to have spotted the object in Kota Tinggi, Johor.
“Right above our heads in Kota Tinggi last night,” the user wrote in a separate post.
A different Threads user, @farahfalisya, also claimed to have heard a sound resembling a jet engine while the phenomenon occurred.
“It sounded like a jet engine from inside the house. From Kemaman,” the user said.
Amid the speculation, Threads user @uthmandaud suggested that the sightings could have been linked to space debris re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.
The user argued that an object producing a prolonged fiery trail across the sky was more likely to be space debris than a meteor, which typically glows for only a few seconds before burning up.
The user further claimed that the object was debris from a NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) space telescope that had been orbiting Earth for 22 years.
Earlier, local media reported that NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, launched in 2004, had re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on November 4 over North Sumatra, Indonesia.
The re-entry of the satellite, which weighed approximately 1,452kg, took place at 8.39pm Malaysian time, with most of its structure expected to burn up as it passed through the atmosphere.
