[imagesource: YouTube / Guardian News]

(Insert the old Superman ‘is it a bird? is it a plane?’ joke here.)

There was something cool flying through the sky on Monday that could really have worked with that line, if only we weren’t a good 50 years over it.

Moving on swiftly, similar to how this celestial chunk burned over the skies, spotted by many from Florida through to the Bahamas.

Videos from front door cameras, dashcams, and people’s phones picked up footage of a fiery trail blaze into an explosion that was a little too close for comfort.

It passed an estimated 9 300 miles (or near 15 000 km) above the planet, to be exact, which is one of the nearest passes in recent times.

The event took place at around 10PM in Florida, and the American Meteor Society (AMS) pencilled it in as unremarkably as Event 2281-2021.

The reality of it was far more out of this world, and according to The Guardian, there was a little debate on Tuesday as to what exactly the object was:

Some experts believe it was asteroid 2021 GW4, spotted for the first time five days ago by astronomers at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter in Arizona, and calculated to travel dangerously close on Monday to a number of satellites orbiting Earth, the nearest only 1,200 miles away.

Others believe the object could have been a chunk from the asteroid, or perhaps a fireball with nothing to do with the GW4.

It's a normal fireball and nothing to do with GW4

— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) April 13, 2021

Jonathan McDowell is an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Whatever it was, it sure had people talking.

This event became the largest in the AMS 2021 database, as over 200 people submitted videos and reports.

Let’s see what they saw:

Not enough? We got you:

I quite like this reaction:

You missed out, Henry.

Maybe a little jealous that America gets to enjoy the show far more often than we do.

[source:guardian]