Another spectacular atmospheric entry of -- something -- has lighted up the sky over Australia, drawing international speculation that the fiery object was a plane, a meteor or perhaps, of course, an alien spacecraft.

As is often the case in today's tech-centric world, social media was itself ablaze with images of the mystery fireball. RT reported the object had a burning tail and streamed across nighttime Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia at about 9:45 p.m. Thursday.

Paul Sadler, a spokesman for Airservices Australia, told ABC Radio pilots and air traffic controllers also called in the flaming object.

"A number of pilots reported it to air traffic controllers ... a meteorite entering the Earth's atmosphere," Sadler said.

The overhead event lasted for about a minute, according to the duration of several YouTube videos.

"We received numerous emergency calls from people concerned," Andrea Brown, a spokeswoman for the Country Fire Authority, told the Herald Sun. "People believed they had witnessed an aircraft crashing into the sea."

Astronomers, however, quickly sought to stop the array of wild guessing by announcing the supposed "meteor" had clearly demonstrated characteristics of a man-made object.

"The images I've seen show a lot of different colors," Ken Le Marquand, president of the Astronomical Society of Victoria, said in a report by the Australian Associated Press. "When you get lots of colors, it usually means there are different materials in there -- man-made materials."

As well, Nobel Prize-winning astronomer Brian Schmidt of Australian National University concluded that "our fireball may well have been a piece of space junk," the RT story said.

Schmidt's assumption was supported by fellow astronomer Michael Brown, from Australia's Monash University, whom the RT quoted as saying "space junk crossed my mind, too."

Sydney observatory astronomer Melissa Hulbert clarified the space junk assumption even more, saying the object likely was part of a Russian satellite launched from Kazakhstan: "It looks like it was the upper stage of a Soyuz rocket that was launched a few days ago."

According to the local Merimbula News Weekly, satellite data from the international Satview Tracking Satellites website network forecast space junk "to re-enter the earth's atmosphere on the night of July 10 and July 11."