People across several parts of Punjab witnessed a rare and surprising sight on Thursday evening when a bright object suddenly lit up the night sky, and this glowing object was seen over Amritsar and many nearby districts, leaving people curious about what they had just witnessed.
The mysterious object appeared at around 8:34 pm on July 16, it was visible for only a few seconds but was bright enough to catch the attention of thousands of people an d many residents quickly took out their phones to record the unusual event, and videos soon started circulating on social media.
The bright streak was reported from Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar and several nearby areas.
The people who saw it described it as a glowing line of light moving quickly across the sky before disappearing, soon as the videos spread online, many people began guessing what the object could be, some believed it was a meteor, while others wondered if it was a satellite or another unusual object.
Since the sight lasted only a few seconds, it created even more curiosity among those who watched it.
Within minutes, videos of the glowing object went viral on platforms such as X, Facebook and Instagram as thousands of users shared clips and discussed the event. One social media user wrote, "I've never seen anything like this over Punjab, it looked straight out of a movie", another person said, "For a moment I thought it was a shooting star, but it was far brighter", while many others also said it was the brightest object they had ever seen moving across the night sky.
According to astronomy experts, the bright object was most likely a meteoroid entering Earth's atmosphere at a very high speed.
A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic object travelling through space and when it enters Earth's atmosphere, it moves at an extremely high speed, the friction between the object and the atmosphere causes it to heat up rapidly. As a result, it starts glowing brightly and creates a spectacular streak of light across the sky.
Experts say this bright display is commonly known as a fireball.
A fireball is a very bright meteor that shines much more brightly than an ordinary shooting star and in most cases, the object burns up completely while passing through the atmosphere, experts believe the object seen over Punjab also most likely disintegrated high above the ground.
Astronomy experts have stressed that such events are natural and are generally harmless, they also said there is no official confirmation that any meteorite pieces reached the ground after the object burned up.
At present, the exact size, origin and composition of the object are not known, there has also been no official report confirming where it came from or whether any part of it survived its journey through the atmosphere but even though the mystery has not been fully solved, experts believe there is no reason for public concern as events like these happen naturally from time to time when space rocks enter Earth's atmosphere.