After Sophie Trabitzsch had looked up at the evening sky over Hohenbrunn on February 19, she quickly pressed the shutter button on her mobile phone because what she had seen was inexplicable to her. “It looks like something crashed,” she wrote in an email to the editors, asking for clarification. A tube-like structure can be seen in the photo and one actually believes that this something would fall from heaven to earth.
Jens Kühne, meteorologist at the German Weather Service (DWD) in Munich, has a sober view of apparent celestial phenomena because of his job, so after a quick look at the photo he can rule out a comet. Such a one would appear much brighter and also make a great noise like a supersonic airplane. The explanation he considers likely: It was the vapor trail of an airplane, which the evening sun partially illuminated from below, giving the impression that the tube was moving vertically.
But it is a beautiful spectacle of light, says the meteorologist. He often sees pictures of this kind himself when he climbs onto the roof of the DWD building in the evening. Kühne’s colleague Andreas Wolff also shares the explanation. It is the perspective that gives the impression that this strip falls from the sky.