Irish Mirror<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI actually watched the launch from the USA online at 6.30pm but we did not expect the fuel dump over Irish skies! It’s nothing too serious, but a very spectacular sight!<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically they always put a bit more fuel into rockets than they need to cover any unforeseen circumstances. These lower stages of rockets don’t make it into orbit and burn up on re-entry after a while.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo stop the leftover fuel from causing an explosion on re-entry they pump it overboard – a ‘fuel dump’. The Sun, visible from that high up even though it is dark from Ireland, lights up this ‘cloud’ of fuel causing these impressive displays.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of us (we have around 100,000+ followers) were out looking at the new Comet Lemmon that has just become visible to the naked eye (and will get five times brighter in the coming days). This comet is a very rare spectacle that we can, and did, predict, unlike fuel dumps!\u201d<\/p>\n
Dedicated aviation journalist Shaun\u2019s Aviation posted a snippet of a conversation between pilots and air traffic controllers on Sunday night, with one pilot describing it as an \u201cexplosion\u201d, while another shared how it appeared like \u201cbright lights\u201d.<\/p>\n
Content cannot be displayed without consent<\/p>\n
Pilot: \u201cThree yankee romeo request.\u201d<\/p>\n
Air traffic control: \u201cAlright, go ahead sir.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pilot: \u201cJust if you\u2019re not busy, have you got any traffic significantly high above us in our 11 o\u2019clock? Bright lights, swirling and letting off gas it looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Air traffic control: \u201cOk, that\u2019s a copy thank you\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pilot two: \u201cYeah we are getting a plasma, that\u2019s him. He\u2019s moving now, to the east, explosion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Air traffic control: \u201cAh who was that last call from please?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pilot two: \u201cThat\u2019s the Portugal 1325.\u201d<\/p>\n
Air traffic control: \u201cPortugal 1325, roger, I\u2019m confirming you\u2019re observing it now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pilot two: \u201cIt just disappeared now. It looks like an explosion and then it was moving eastward and now it\u2019s disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Air traffic control: \u201cCopy. Shamrock Three Yankee Zero, are you still observing anything?<\/p>\n
Pilot one: \u201cYeah it disappeared for us too, we started seeing it about two minutes ago. It\u2019s illuminated very bright, and then kind of broke up into a circular array and disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: <\/strong>Sign up here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pilots flying over Irish airspace spotted \u201cbright lights, swirling and letting off gas\u201dA bright object spotted in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[582,80214,18,19,4723,17,133,451,2731],"class_list":{"0":"post-134033","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-astronomy-ireland","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-in-the-news","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-space","16":"tag-spacex"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0_object.png\")
A bright object spotted in the skies above Ireland on Sunday(Image: X \/ Shauns_Aviation)<\/p>\n