Social media in Brunei flares up with sightings of ‘fireball’ in the sky

A rare astronomical phenomenon of a blazing fireball streak in the sky was seen on Thursday night. Photo shows a dashcam footage of the flashing bright green light along Jalan Kebangsaan. - Borneo Bulletin/ANN

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Dec 18 (Borneo Bulletin/ANN): Several lucky individuals in the country witnessed a rare astronomical phenomenon of a blazing fireball streak in the sky on Thursday night.

The incident, which turned out to be a meteor shooting down the sky, was reported to the Astronomical Society of Brunei Darussalam (PABD).

According to PABD, observers from Brunei-Muara and Tutong districts reportedly witnessed the spectacular sight and one of them managed to capture the bright green flash of light on a vehicle dashcam.

Alhakim, 31, was on his way home from work when the cosmic beam flashed in front of his eyes while he was driving along Jalan Kebangsaan heading north towards Jalan Utama Mentiri highway at around 7.40pm.

According to Alhakim, “On that evening, out of the blue I saw a flashing bright green light shooting down from the sky.”

His five-second dashcam footage revealed a meteor coming down from west to east and disintegrated in the air.

“Few seconds later, the light just dispersed on its own. It was beautiful!” he said.

The fireball dashing safely over Jame’ ‘Asr Hassanil Bolkiah was also captured by two home security cameras at a PABD member’s residence in Kiarong.

“It was moving approximately at bearing 040 deg (NE) to 080 deg (E) from Kiarong,” Haji Azri said on his Instagram TV post.

Social media comments by few netizens mistakenly thought the fireball was the Leonard comet (C/2021 A1) lightshow which occurred during its close approach around the same week. A comet orbits in space and will display a fuzzy nucleus with its main tail and remains in the sky for a few hours.

A meteor or “shooting star”, on the other hand, is a brief flash of light resulting from dust fragments from space that strike the Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds, and the larger ones will display fireballs.

For further sightings of fireballs in the night sky, the public can contact the International Meteor Organization (IMO) at www.imo.net/observations/fireballs/fireball-report-program/. - Borneo Bulletin/ANN