Alexia Johnston
The Timaru Herald
Tue, 19 Jun 2012 22:15 CDT

Rare Sight
© Gary Brooker
Rare Sight: Oamaru man Gary Brooker, near Moeraki at the time, captured this image of a bright object in the sky on June 3.
A bright blaze shooting across the night sky has been caught on camera by Oamaru man Gary Brooker.

Mr Brooker was driving north along State Highway 1, near Moeraki, when he spotted the bright trail at 6pm on June 3.

''I was coming home along the main road and I spotted it going down so I stopped and took a photo.

''I didn't think it was a plane because the vapour trail would have been white, but this was burning.''

He said there was an obvious object leading the trail, which he believed was a piece of ''junk''.

''I wouldn't have a clue (how fast it was going). I was doing 100km on the main highway, but I had enough time to put my foot on the brake, stop and take a photo and then it was gone.

''Somebody said it could have been out near Australia. It could have been miles and miles away, but it was so bright.''

It was the first time Mr Brooker had witnessed such an event. He has since shared his discovery with other people, including a friend who has researched the sighting online.

And it turns out Mr Brooker was not the only one who witnessed the rare event over New Zealand.

Another sighting, believed to be the same object, was recorded on the internet, along with another photo, Mr Brooker said.

this one was taken in England yesterday...

looks to me like a vapor trail of a plain and the sun going down near by is giving it the orange look

i kind of thought that too, but it is hard to tell from the angle of the picture. I can't tell if it is heading straight down, or following the horizon like a plane would... but it does have the twin contrails like a jet would have...

That looks like either a meteor, or space junk entering the atmosphere. I saw a Chines satellite re-enter over Queensland years ago and it looked very similar to this. I have also seen quite a few larger meteors here as well.

Probably bigfoot.

Or they are shooting a new X-Files movie....

I hope it's better than the last one...

The last one was boring.

yes... i could barely watch the whole movie... they need to take moulder to their home planet...

An unidentified flying object was spotted Sunday at Phoenix Mountain, a tourist resort in Wuchang, Heilongjiang Province.

The object, resembling the space lab Tiangong-1, appeared at 3:42 pm in the air and soon disappeared. A dozen people, including several tourists, witnessed the object. Five tourists called police to report the sighting.

Wu Chunyan, a photographer snapped the object when seeing the unusual scene.

So far there is no confirmation whether this is some kind of aircraft or natural phenomenon.

The 1,690-meter high Phoenix Mountain is a national forest park. A UFO spotting was also reported here in 1994.

The cuckoo clock rang 23:21 hours last night when a surprising flash of light turned the night skies over Iquique practically into daylight.

Bar goers who were walking along the streets of that northern city at that time of night craned their necks and gaped at the stellar spectacle, which was even seen as far away as Calama.

The light - a flash of azure color - as it was described by some people were able to see it, crossed the sky from the east before vanishing into the sea.

The event obviously caused a certain degree of concern among residents of Iquique, who even associated the light with the presence of a UFO.

Mario Hernandez, director of ONEMI in the city of Tarapaca, who saw the powerful light, said that "it could be associated with that of an electric storm, but of far greater magnitude."

He noted that the origin of the luminous object has not yet been established, as it was not picked up on the FACH (Chilean Air Force) or DGAC (General Office of Civil Aeronautics) radar systems.

(Translation (c) 2012, Scott Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO)

Source: La Cuarta (newspaper, Chile)