By Shaun Smillie
It came from outer space, a strange object blazing across the Johannesburg sky. That is what it seemed - a UFO - and with it on Sunday night came a flood of calls to observatories and radio shows.
Witnesses reported seeing a bright pulsating light with a halo and a second object that followed it.
But by yesterday, astronomers knew it had been caused by a US space rocket performing tests after it had released its satellite payload.
The object was seen over South Africa on Sunday.
"Calls just began flooding in," said Mellony Spark, a student astronomer in the Western Cape.
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Claire Flanagan, of the Johannesburg Planetarium, said: "One man said he was jackal-hunting and had watched the object through the scope of his rifle."
Flanagan received many calls not only from Johanneburg, but from Klerksdorp, Rustenburg and the Free State too.
Spark was able to track the object's flight path. Soon it was spotted in Italy.
"It took half an hour to leg it across Africa," she said.
On Sunday evening, a rocket carrying a US military weather satellite blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The objects that people saw are believed to have been the rocket and a satellite. Once the rocket was over Europe, it dumped fuel and left Earth's orbit around Greenland.
Europeans also noticed the object and posted footage on the Internet.
- This article was originally published on page 1 of Daily News on October 20, 2009
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