{"id":538851,"date":"2025-10-31T01:58:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T01:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/538851\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T01:58:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T01:58:30","slug":"mysterious-lights-hovering-over-south-west-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/538851\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious lights hovering over South West explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

The flying object has been identified<\/p>\n

16:43, 30 Oct 2025Updated 16:49, 30 Oct 2025<\/p>\n

A mysterious bright object spotted in skies over the UK was likely the debris from an Elon Musk rocket, experts have said.<\/p>\n

Residents in several locations across the South West saw the oddly shaped light overnight, describing it as “bright and silent”.<\/p>\n

The strange burst of light seen on Wednesday night surprised many people who questioned its origin.<\/p>\n

Micha\u0142 Ple\u015bniak, speaking from Thornbury<\/a> near Bristol, said: “I was walking back with the dogs when I saw something bright in the sky to the northwest from Wales. It was so bright and silent.<\/p>\n

“I called my wife to bring the kids outside so they could also see it. They were so happy to witness that rare moment.”<\/p>\n

Another person, in Plymouth, said: “It was moving across the sky and had a almost flat top with what seemed to be a light of some sort trailing underneath.<\/p>\n

“It was also quite high up.”<\/p>\n

A second Plymouth resident said: “At 18:27 I saw a bright blue-white halo with a glowing core moving steadily across the night sky. The sight matches a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage from the Starlink 10-37 mission launched from Cape Canaveral earlier this evening at 16:35 UTC.”<\/p>\n

\"AA mysterious light seen in the skies over the South West(Image: Submitted)<\/p>\n

Experts and amateur stargazers deduced the distracting light was the ejection of fuel from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launched from Florida on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

SpaceX, owned by tech billionaire and the world\u2019s richest man Mr Musk, operate a series of low-earth orbit satellites for Starlink, an international satellite telecommunications service.<\/p>\n

The bright light was said to be caused by the process of excess rocket fuel being ejected and freezing, then reflecting light back to earth.<\/p>\n

The path and the trajectory of the rocket matches the reported sightings, experts said. Space commentator Leo Enright said ejecting fuel from rockets was a normal occurrence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they keep the fuel in the rocket there is a danger that it will explode and shower debris, so it is a standard practice now for space companies to vent fuel,\u201d Mr Enright told the PA news agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does look spectacular if it happens at a particular time of the day, when the viewer down on earth is in darkness or near darkness and the rocket stage is in light.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the view is often \u201cmore spectacular\u201d than was seen on Wednesday night because the ejected fuel can be seen rotating. \u201cWhen the stage is rotating you get a truly extraordinary spiral effect that makes it look like a galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The flying object has been identified 16:43, 30 Oct 2025Updated 16:49, 30 Oct 2025 A mysterious bright object…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,748,393,77,728,4884,53,16,15,741,9023],"class_list":{"0":"post-538851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-weather","18":"tag-weird-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115466305811694921","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}