On the evening of October 12, residents of the North Kazakhstan Region witnessed an unusual phenomenon — bright glowing lights flew across the sky over Petropavl. Eyewitnesses captured the footage on their phones and published it on social media, sharing the video in one of the local public pages, reports infohub.kz.
In the comments, users put forward a variety of versions of what happened: some suggested drones, others — an airplane, a meteorite, a rocket, or even an unidentified flying object. Another video of the mysterious object was filmed by a Kazakh woman during her evening run.
Kazinform agency decided to find out the nature of this object or phenomenon from Professor of M. Kozybayev North Kazakhstan University, renowned astrophysicist Andrey Solodovnik. In his opinion, the lights spotted by Kazakhstanis could have been the result of the burning up in the atmosphere of parts of space technology that had entered orbit.
"It could have been a bolide, but its speed is several times lower. It could also be the destruction of the last stage of a launch vehicle or a satellite that has deorbited. Such videos have been filmed before in other regions of the world. Currently, the number of satellites exceeds a thousand. So it could be one of the devices that has ceased operation," said Andrey Solodovnik.
The professor noted that in October of this year, bright bolides are not uncommon, since during this period the Earth simultaneously crosses the orbit of several major meteor showers. The main reason for this is that small particles separating from comets enter the Earth's atmosphere at high speed.
Andrey Solodovnik explained that when a meteorite falls to the ground, people may hear a sound resembling thunder. And if an object just flies across the sky flashing, it could be a bolide. According to him, such a phenomenon does not pose a threat, since the object burns up in the atmosphere and turns to dust before reaching the ground.