Reports of a UFO in China are circling the web, with residents of Beijing and nearby towns claiming to have seen ‘a moving cloud-like object’ with three light sources.
Images and videos of the observation flooded Chinese social media platforms Monday, with many users commonly describing it as a ‘misty ball of light’ that moved from west to east without emitting any sound.
More than 900,000 threads about the sighting surfaced online Monday afternoon.
One person shared on Weibo that the weather was clear in Beijing when they witnessed ‘a glowing object looming’ and determined it was not an aircraft because there were no flashing lights.
One user shared the object had three light sources and [being] shaped like an isosceles triangle’ and disappeared ‘like a mist and disappear without a trace.’
Another posted on Weibo: ‘There were three light sources flying very fast.
‘At the same time, there was a large halo on the east side of the light group. There was no sound.’
A Beijing resident commented: ‘What is this thing? And it flies very fast, and it is in front of me all of a sudden.’
An astronomer also weighed in on the sightings, theorizing the UFO could have been a Space rocket used to launch SpaceX’s Starlink satellites on Sunday – but the suggestion has yet to be confirmed.
Wang Zhuoxiao, a researcher at the Centre for Astronomy Technology at Tsinghua University in Beijing, also posted online with his speculation, according to the South China Morning Post.
Zhuoxiao suggested the glowing object was excess fuel released by a SpaceX rocket that launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Sunday at 3:59am ET.
The statements align with what is known as the ‘Twilight phenomenon,’ which is produced when unburned particles of propellant and water left in the vapor trail of a launch vehicle condenses, freezes and then expands high up in the less dense upper atmosphere.
Zhuoxiao noted that the circular shape was likely formed as the rocket was performing a tumbling motion to release unneeded fuel to help it climb to orbit,
An anonymous astronomer from the Beijing Planetarium also said it could have been a rocket launched from the US.
The astronomer mentioned a similar sighting in China on September 13, 2023 that was later found to be linked to a rocket cloud formed by a previous SpaceX launch.
New Zealanders witnessed a nearly identical event in 2022 when a glowing blue swirl appeared in the night sky, which was created by a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster.
The rocket spun to vent its fuel, it created a vapor trail that reflected the sunlight and produced a visible blue swirl that eyewitnesses said moved ‘serenely’ across the night sky.
The plume lit up the sky over Nelson, a city at the tip of New Zealand’s south island, and travelled 466 miles (750km) south to Stewart Island by about 7:30pm.
The two-stage rocket had been launched on Sunday morning from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
It was carrying a communications satellite for the Louisiana-based company Globalstar, which SpaceX said was deployed about 1 hour and 50 minutes after launch as planned.
After dispatching its payload, the Falcon 9 began venting its fuel, while the rocket’s first stage returned to Earth for a vertical landing on SpaceX’s droneship.
However, the recent event in China has not been confirmed to be linked to a SpaceX rocket just yet.
