‘UFO’ reported over China with ‘three sources of light’ moving quickly without emitting any sound – and witnesses say it wasn’t a plane
Reports of a UFO in China have been circulating on the internet, with residents of Beijing and nearby cities claiming to have seen the UFO. ‘a moving cloud-like object’ with three light sources.
Images and videos of the sighting flooded Chinese social media platforms on Monday, with many users commonly describing it as a “misty ball of light” moving from west to east without emitting any sound.
More than 900,000 topics about the sighting appeared online on Monday afternoon.
One person said on Weibo that the weather was clear in Beijing when they witnessed “a glowing object looming” and determined it was not a plane because there were no flashing lights.
Reports of a UFO in China have been circulating on the internet, with residents of Beijing and nearby cities claiming to have seen ‘a moving cloud-like object’ with three sources of light.
The ball of light appeared Monday morning over the country’s capital and as far away as Tianjin and central Shanxi province and Shandong in the east.
One user shared that the object had three light sources and was shaped like an isosceles triangle’ and disappeared ‘like a mist and disappeared without a trace’.
Another posted on Weibo: “There were three sources of light flying very fast.
‘At the same time there was a large halo on the east side of the light group. There was no sound.’
Images and videos of the sighting flooded Chinese social media platforms on Monday, with many users commonly describing it as a “misty ball of light” moving from west to east without emitting any sound.
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 airplane because there were no flashing lights
A Beijing resident said: ‘What is this? And it flies really fast, and suddenly it’s in front of me.’
An astronomer also weighed in on the sightings and theorized that the UFO could be 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 Center for Astronomy Technology at Tsinghua University in Beijing, also posted his speculations online, according to the South China Morning Mail.
Zhuoxiao suggested that the glowing object was excess fuel released by a SpaceX rocket that launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 3:59 a.m. ET on Sunday.
The statements are consistent with what’s known as the “Twilight phenomenon,” which occurs when unburned particles of propellant and water left in the vapor trail of a launch vehicle condense, freeze and then expand high in the less dense upper atmosphere.
Zhuoxiao noted that the round shape was likely formed when the rocket performed a tumbling motion to release unnecessary fuel to help it climb into orbit.
The ball of light appeared Monday morning over the country’s capital and as far away as Tianjin and central Shanxi province and Shandong in the east. More than 900,000 topics about the sighting appeared online on Monday afternoon
New Zealanders witnessed a nearly identical event in 2022 when a glowing blue swirl appeared in the night sky, created by a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster
An anonymous astronomer from the Beijing Planetarium also said it could be a rocket launched from the US.
The astronomer reported a similar sighting in China on September 13, 2023, which later turned out to be related 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, created by a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster.
The rocket spun to release its fuel, creating a vapor trail that reflected sunlight and created a visible blue swirl that eyewitnesses said moved “quietly” across the night sky.
The plume lit up the sky over Nelson, a city on the tip of New Zealand’s South Island, and traveled 750 kilometers south to Stewart Island around 7:30 p.m.
The two-stage rocket was launched Sunday morning from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
It carried a communications satellite from Louisiana-based company Globalstar, which SpaceX said deployed about 1 hour and 50 minutes after launch, as planned.
After dispatching its payload, the Falcon 9 began dumping its fuel as the rocket’s first stage returned to Earth for a vertical landing on SpaceX’s drone ship.
However, it has not yet been confirmed that the recent event in China is related to a SpaceX rocket.