A part of debris from a Russian rocket appears to have burned up in the sky of Abu Dhabi , leaving muddiness as to what   caused the loose show .

The debris appeared like a meteoroid in the night sky , with trails of lighter hap   above Abu Dhabi last night . Various substance abuser took to Twitter to name what they thought was a shooting star .

However , the lead of brightness level   move much too slowly to be a meteoroid ( these typically whizz through the sky ) . So , another explanation was needed . And there is one !

The debris is almost certainly   part of a Russian projectile , the SL-4 , that launched onOctober 14 . It launched the Progress cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station ( ISS ) , which docked yesterday , October 16 .

unremarkably debris like this burn up in the upper air over an ocean . But this clock time it happened to blow one’s stack near a populated surface area . It ’s unreadable if any of the debris has made it to the ground .

While the cause of the rubble has n’t been confirmed , US Strategic Commandsaid the SL-4 had “ re - entered the atmosphere Oct 16 2017 at 15:28 UTC . ” That ’s about the same local clip in Abu Dhabi that the event was reported , just after sunset , bring in it understandably visible .

“ The view was outstanding and last [ sic ] for almost 80 seconds , ” theDubai Astronomy Groupsaid . They and others incorrectly labeled this as the Progress spacecraft itself , but that is still docked to the ISS .

“ The trajectory of the debris was over Arabian Peninsula crossing UAE and Oman to finally over [ the ]   Indian Ocean , ” they added .

This is n’t the first clip detritus has visibly fallen back to Earth . Perhaps the most famous is the 2011 re - submission of the Russian space station Mir . Pieces of the station were visible from Fiji andcaught on cameraas it burned up in the air .

In afew months , we may get an even more spectacular show , when China ’s Tiangong-1 distance station re - enters the atmosphere . Currentpredictionssay it could burn up over the middle of the Pacific Ocean , so it might not be visible . But   perchance we ’ll get a bit of a show somewhere .