The evening of 6 November 2026 in Northern China began ordinarily. People were coming home from work, driving along highways, walking the streets of Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi and neighboring provinces. The sky was already growing dark when, at around 18:30, something flashed in the southwest. A huge bright ball, shimmering green, yellow and red, streaked across the sky and vanished within seconds. Many at first took it for fireworks or an explosion. But the light was too strong: it pierced the clouds, for a moment making the night almost as bright as day.
Hundreds of eyewitnesses managed to capture the moment. Recordings from dashcams and phones quickly spread across the internet. In Beijing, Mr. Wu, who was driving along the expressway near the Siyuan Bridge, described how a huge fireball fell rapidly at an angle of about 30 degrees to the horizon. "It was very bright and colorful, just like a burning ball. We didn't even have time to raise our phones — and it was already gone. It lasted two or three seconds," he said. In Haidian, Fengtai and other districts of the city, people saw the same thing. In Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, a woman recalled: the ball appeared suddenly, glowed in different colors, passed through the clouds and lit them from within. The phenomenon lasted about four to five seconds. Similar reports came from Shanxi, Henan and even more distant places. The distances between observation points measured hundreds of kilometers, yet everyone described the same object.
Specialists quickly confirmed the nature of the event. Former director of the Beijing Planetarium Zhu Jin, after reviewing dashcam footage, stated that this was a typical bolide — a bright meteor whose brightness exceeds that of Venus. According to him, it was a sporadic (random) meteoroid not associated with known meteor showers. Li Xin, director of the science popularization department at the Beijing Planetarium, emphasized: from the timing and directions of the recordings it is clear that residents of Beijing, Hebei and Shanxi observed the same object. Such bodies are usually a meter or more in size. Entering the atmosphere at enormous speed, they become incandescent from friction, glow brightly and often break apart in the air. That is why the video shows the ball flashing even brighter and possibly fragmenting.
The colors — green, yellow, red — are linked to the chemical composition of the material. Different elements emit different light when heated. This is not unusual for large bolides, but it is precisely such brightness and duration that make the event noticeable over a large area. Experts note: the body was large enough that there is a high probability part of the material did not burn up completely and reached the surface as meteorites. The possible impact site has not yet been precisely determined. Specialists continue to analyze the trajectory using numerous video recordings. If someone finds an unusual stone with a fused crust in a field or in the mountains, it is best not to break it open oneself but to hand it over to scientists.
On social media, people shared not only videos but also their reactions. Some made wishes, some joked about recouping their stock market investments, some simply froze at the beauty of the moment. The phenomenon lasted only a few seconds, but it left behind a sense of encountering something ancient and distant. A space rock that had wandered the Solar System for millions of years suddenly entered Earth's atmosphere right over Northern China and briefly united the gazes of thousands of people.
Such events happen regularly, but far from every one is so bright and well documented. This time, technology — from dashcams to smartphones — made it possible to preserve the moment from almost every angle. Researchers now have rich material for refining the trajectory, estimating the mass and searching for possible fragments. No meteorites have been found yet, and the sky is already calm again. But those who managed to look up on 6 November will long remember how the night sky briefly blazed with a strange, distant fire.