The woman was outside with her dog at around 10.30pm when she looked up at the south west sky and saw a strange bright orangey red object.

“It was coming down dead straight, but it wasn’t a flare, a comet or a shooting star,” she said. “It was weird.”

She recalls there was no sound and the UFO was much larger than anything she’s ever seen in the sky.

She described it as looking like an upright cigar, burning in the centre rather than having a tail. There seemed to be flame all around it.

The woman was concerned it could start a bush fire and watched for some time after it disappeared from view, half expecting to see a massive blaze flare up.

Unfortunately there was no way to tell if the UFO was about to land in Tilba or if it was making its way to Antarctica (or Chile).

She speculated whether it may have been debris from the failed Russian space probe Phobos-Grunt, which crashed into the Pacific Ocean showering Chile’s coast.

The Narooma News is keen to hear from anyone else who may have witnessed the same unexplained event.