PETALING JAYA, Feb 17 — Early risers in Johor Bahru and Singapore were treated to an unusual sight when a meteor ripped through the skies during the wee hours of February 12.
The phenomenon was captured on a dashcam recording taken along a highway in Johor at 5am and was reposted to the Facebook page All Singapore Stuff.
Several users also reported sightings in various areas throughout Singapore.
“This is what I saw at Bartley this morning,” said Sky Tai.
“Saw this at Loyang at 5am! Same timestamp! I thought Singapore was under attack! Phew, thank God it wasn’t a hallucination,” said Izzat Asyraff Nahrawi.
The meteor flash lasted between 3.5 and 7.5 seconds and was light green and blue in colour, based on the sightings of three individuals who submitted their findings to the International Meteor Organisation website.
A pending report by May Lilian N described the meteor as “(exploding) into a huge fireball of orange-red”.
“It felt super near as I was standing on my balcony watching it explode and it disappeared within split seconds.
“At first, I thought it was going to either land into the sea right below my house or the wetland opposite because it was too big and it seemed very near.
“I honestly felt like I was in a sci-fi movie like Star Trek,” she wrote.
Space enthusiasts from Singapore’s Astronomy.SG told Coconuts Singapore that there was no record of Wednesday morning’s fireball with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) or the European Space Agency.
“From the video evidence, we cannot confirm the nature of the object. We do not have hard proof that it did hit the ground and there is no data from NASA and the ESA confirming it is a meteorite at this present moment.
“Our best guess is that it is a meteor that burned up before hitting land or a fragment of a larger meteorite that entered the atmosphere,” said an Astronomy.SG representative.
