Video captures ‘surreal’ fireball streaking across Australian night sky

VICTORIA, Australia — “Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!” That’s probably what one Australian farmer thought when he saw literal balls of falling through the sky.

Thomas Toose of Creswick, located in Victoria, Australia, recorded a “surreal” video of several fireballs streaking through the night sky on May 22.

The video was posted to his Twitter and the object “was massive and lasted about 20 seconds,” according to Toose.

It is unclear what caused the fireball but some speculated that it was remnants from a Russian rocket used to launch a new satellite into orbit according to The Age, a local online publication.

“What gives it away as being a space junk [rather than a meteor or comet] is that it’s come in at a very shallow angle, so that means it would have been a very low Earth orbit and just re-entered the atmosphere and started burning because of friction,” said Perry Vlahos, vice president of the Astronomical Society of Victoria.

Storyful contributed to this story.