Bright flashes of light filled the night sky of Karachi in the early hours of Monday as people spotted and shared visuals of meteors in the sky.

Local social media was flooded with images and videos of meteors streaking across the sky before vanishing in a flash. A resident captured the spectacle on camera outside their house, while a driver on a main road recorded it on their dash cam.

Weather analyst Jawad Memon explained that meteors were space debris, usually very small in size with most of them breaking off as very small pieces of rocks from a bigger asteroid.

“On the night of March 17 at 2:43am, a similar meteor was seen over the sky of Karachi and like thousands of others that have been spotted across the globe, it burned off over the skies of Karachi creating a streak of blue tone light during the burning process.”

He explained that space debris or any other object that entered the Earth’s atmosphere burns up as it encounters the planet’s gravitational force and ignites due to the friction created by its very high falling speed.

“Usually due to light pollution, they often cross unnoticeable over big cities such as Karachi but last night’s was bigger in size hence it took time to burn off completely.”

He said the phenomenon was spotted not only in Karachi but in many other areas of southern Sindh.

Similarly, Karachi Astronomers Society member Adeel Shafiq told Dawn.com the sightings were very much real along with all the videos shared by those lucky enough to have caught it on camera.

He said that was not always the case regarding whether all meteors were this bright. “But perhaps this one was bigger in size, maybe two to three metres long. The light generated from it was its burning from the friction generated as it entered the atmosphere,” he said.

Pointing out the difference between a meteor and a meteorite he said. “Many are calling it a meteorite but a meteorite hits the ground. A meteor burns up in the air. It doesn’t fall to the ground,” he explained.

“It may not be a common occurrence in a city such as Karachi, also known as the ‘City of Lights’, but we see lots of meteors in remote areas where there is hardly any population or city lights as well as from observatories,” he said.