Showing posts with label Vladivostok. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vladivostok. Show all posts
Monday, September 02, 2013
UFO, Meteor, Space Debris? Russian Fireball Puzzles Sky-Watchers | VIDEO
Witnesses in Russia’s Far East were astounded to see a spectacular burning object break up in the sky near Vladivostok. Though bloggers hailed it as a “meteor,” scientists are skeptical.
Photos and videos of the object posted online have provoked a debate on Russian social networks, with various ideas offered for what it might be.
“I was sitting in my car. I did not start taking pictures immediately – first I did not pay attention. It was flying soundless,” said one Internet user, who posted several photos of the event.
Witnesses said the early morning sky over Russky Island, across Vladivostok Bay, was lit up by a fireball, which later turned into a flaming line that remained in the sky for an hour and a half.
Some Russian media reported the sightings as a “meteor,” saying it was some 15 kilometers above the ground.
Other people speculated that the object could be a plane, an unmanned aircraft, a space craft or a distress flare. . . .
UFO Fireball Over Vladivostok Creates Commotion in Russian Far East
Or was it a meteor lighting up the early morning sky over the Pacific port?
The flash across the sky at 7.25am caused a sensation in the Russian Far East on Sunday, with social sites exploding with theories over the dramatic flashes from the fireball. Witnesses in Vladivostok claimed it was a meteor of the kind that earlier this year struck the Urals.
Some observers said the object streaking across the sky 'looked like a plane' and others called it a UFO buzzing the flood-ridden Far East of Russia.
By later in the day, scientists had a more prosaic explanation. Vladimir Surdin, a fellow of Moscow State University's Shtenberg Institute of Astronomy, said: 'Judging by the pictures, it was an artificial object. It was moving west to east and was observed some 20 minutes after Zenit rocket was launched from Baikonur cosmodrome.'
He told RIA Novosti: 'A meteorite body usually explodes all at once, while here we see a gradual break up as happened during the MIR space station or the Colunbia shuttle fall.'
