The content appeared on social media after people saw and took pictures of the UFO in the sky at around 6pm on January 14 (local time). A Beijing resident described it as “a moving cloud-like object”.
Another person described it in more detail, saying that the weather in Beijing at the time was “very clear, no clouds, and then I saw a faintly glowing object but the light was not flashing”.
The glowing object “had three light sources and was shaped like an isosceles triangle,” the person wrote, adding that it eventually “disappeared like mist and left no trace.”
The UFO was seen by people in several places in China, including the nearby city of Tianjin, as well as the central provinces of Shanxi and Shandong to the east.
They described the object as a “foggy ball of light” that flew quickly from west to east without making a sound. Many who saw it noted that there were no flashing lights, making it unlikely to be an aircraft.
Researcher Wang Zhuoxiao at the Center for Astronomy Technology at Tsinghua University in Beijing said that it could be the rocket used to launch Starlink satellites belonging to billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX (USA).
A Falcon 9 rocket launched 22 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 3:59 a.m. local time on January 14, 2020 (4:59 p.m. in Beijing).
The rocket’s trajectory is inclined 53 degrees to the south and it will fly over northern China halfway through its flight, making it visible in Beijing and other cities at dusk or before sunrise, Wang said.
He said that after the Starlink satellites are put into orbit, the rocket will dump excess fuel, which in the process can scatter light, meaning it can form a cloud around the rocket.
People in northern China saw a similar object in the sky on the night of September 13, 2023, describing it as two beams of light that gradually disappeared after about a minute. The phenomenon was later identified as a rocket cloud formed after a spacecraft launch.
