A fireball crossed the night sky on the night of Tuesday and was seen by many observers in the southeast region. The fireball had reddish color and may have been caused by reentry remains of a Chinese rocket type Long March.

According to some observers who wrote for Apolo11, the fireball crossed the sky slowly towards southeast and appeared to have a small tail like a comet.

"The 23h40, an object crossed the sky Araçatuba-SP. From the moment we saw it, was near the zenith going towards the southeast and was up near the horizon, behind houses, which could no longer see," said the observer Diego Adelson, who witnessed the passage.

According to Adelson, the object had reddish glow and brighter than the planet Venus. "You could see a small trail behind," he said.


Work done by Apolo11 together with website tracking space junk Satview.org indicates that the fireball may have been caused by a piece of space debris created by a rocket-type Chinese Long March 2F, identified as 39181U. This artifact was recently released and took the Chinese astronauts toward space station orbiting Tiangong-1.

The prediction was calculated for reentry at 11h33 for Wednesday, June 19, with a margin of error of approximately 8 hours more or less.

The object was also seen in the city of Campinas, São Paulo Bento and according to Wagner, who works at the National Synchrotron Light Laboratory, University of Campinas, the object appeared to be very large. "When I arrived around 23h45 the gatehouse guard warned me about a comet or meteor that was going over the lab at that moment," the netizen said in an email sent to Apolo11.