Piece from a Russian Soyuz rocket lights up the sky
Astronomers believe the bright light that lit up the sky in the south-eastern states last night was a two-tonne piece of a Russian Soyuz rocket.
Social media websites lit up from around 9.45pm (AEST) with reports of sightings of a bright object with a long tail burning across the sky in Victoria, NSW and Tasmania on Thursday night.
Sydney observatory astronomer Melissa Hulbert says what was believed to be a meteor was more likely part of a Russian satellite launched from Kazakhstan.
"It looks like it was the upper-stage of a Soyuz's rocket that was launched a few days ago," Ms Hulbert told AAP.
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"Apparently the tracking and impact prediction matched, time and location, what we saw."
She said the object seen over Australian skies would have been a piece of the rocket designed to fall away as part of the launch of the satellite.
"It's kind of like the Apollo mission," she said.
"Parts would be dropped off at various points throughout the mission."
The object would have had a diameter of about 3.35m and a length of about 1.5m, she said.
Astronomical Society of Victoria president Ken Le Marquand said the colours reported to have been seen also indicated it was man-made.
"The images I've seen show a lot of different colours," Mr Le Marquand told AAP.
"When you get lots of colours it usually means there's different materials in there, man-made materials," he said.
"The fact they saw all these colours in it could indicate it's made of different materials."
Mr Le Marquand also pointed to a Twitter post by Nobel Prize winning Australian National University Astronomer Brian Schmidt.
"So our fireball may well have been a piece of space junk," Prof Schmidt wrote, linking to data showing the trajectory of meteor decay.
Monash astronomer Michael Brown replied that he had had the same idea.
"Space junk crossed my mind too. Travelling close to horizontal and taking a long (time) to burn up," he wrote.
Jed Garkut of Bawley Point in southeast New South Wales was able to capture a unique photo of the burning light as it moved across the sky when he was taking photos of stars at about 9.45pm (AEST).
"I was taking star photos, which means you have the shutter speed set at 20 seconds, [so] it was able to take in all that light.
"I was at the right spot at the right time, with the right gear," he said.
Lisa Rochfort Demsey of Langwarrin, in Melbourne's southeast, said her husband Glen saw the 'meteorite' as he took his bins out.
"He saw a massive shooting white star moving south to north with what looked like sparks trailling off its long, white tail. Then he lost sight of it. All up it took about six seconds," she said.
Lisa Gent saw the meteorite while driving in Diamond Creek, an outer north-eastern suburb of Melbourne, about 9.50pm (AEST).
"My little man Jayden said `Hey mum, what's that? It looks like a shooting star'," she told AAP.
"It was amazing. My daughter Caitlin was sitting in the front of the car and she was like, `OMG! What is that?'."
"It was an amazing bright light with a really long, white tail with flecks of red. It was just amazing.
"It looked like absolutely nothing I had ever seen. Quite scary once we knew it was something like we had never seen before."
For more stargazing photos, visit Jed Garkut Photography.
