The brightly glowing sphere, which was visible on Tuesday evening from the A58 highway between Eindhoven and Oirschot, keeps people busy. Many people think they know what that special phenomenon must have been.
A UFO, a meteor, a balloon, ball lightning, everything passed by. According to meteorologist Diana Woei of Weerplaza, it has nothing to do with the weather. “So no ball lightning or fireball. Incidentally, it was a calm and clear evening.”
It was not a meteor either, according to Urijan Poerink of the Halley observatory. And no fireworks.
Most people think it’s a flare. If you search for flares on YouTube, you’ll see a lot of similarities: the same fireball with a smoky, luminescent tail above it.
The flare floats above the large army training area on the Oirschotse Heide, but a defense spokesperson could not find any exercises in which flares were used on Tuesday evening.
You shoot a flare with an air pistol. There are also tubes with which you can fire a shot once. After the shot, which is usually aimed straight up to get as high as possible, a parachute opens in the air that brakes the flare in its fall. As a result, the orb can be seen for a long time.
These images of flares were made at the Artillerie Shooting Camp in ‘t Harde on the Veluwe: