And with 'Doomsday' on 21 December 2012 approaching, some were even worried that it is the end of the world as predicted by the infamous Mayan calendar.
Local resident and South African singer, Wendy Oldfield who was in Rheenendal at 20:40 with friends describes the phenomenon as a "glowing ball" in the sky.
Oldfield posted her experience on Facebook saying: "Saw a UFO last night with four of my friends and no it was not hallucinogenically induced. A pukka intense experience - big glowing ball, a mist kinda grew out of it, and it looked like a northern lights experience - the mist shifting and shaping into a V and then flowing into other shapes. The yellow ball diffused into the mist which from the outset had been glowing all the time and slowly became more and more transparent until gone."
According to Oldfield, who lives in Wilderness, they watched it for about four minutes and were totally mesmerised by it.
She says her friend, Howard Butcher who is an experienced pilot of 30 years (and a bit of an eyeroller) tried hard to explain to them that it was an aircraft but as it became more and more visible, he eventually could not explain it at all and could not come up with anything reasonable or logical for its being there.
"I have to say it seemed very friendly and we were all left feeling quite uplifted and glorious."
Tracey Kemp commented on Oldfield's post saying they saw it "right outside their flat moving slowly into town" before it disappeared into thin air.
The same 'sightings' were seen by people from the West Coast, Northern Cape and Karoo up to De Aar at the same time according to the website, Life is Savage.
Case Rijsdijk, well-known astronomer from Wilderness says it was not a UFO people saw but explained that further investigation revealed that it was the launch of a secret US spacecraft known as X-37B on a Centaur 2 rocket.
"What people saw was the retro-burn to separate the spacecraft from the rocket. This enabled the Centaur 2 to return to Earth and put the X-37B into orbit, where it will stay for about 425 days. So, as is usually the case, the UFO became an IFO - Identified Flying Object!!"
Greg Roberts from Cape Town, a veteran satellite tracker, took a video and images of the event, which Willie Koorts, of the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), edited and put on You Tube.
The images show the separation burn. The X-37B is the small bright dot to the right of the plume of gas. The Centaur 2 rocket burn is the larger, brighter gas cloud, with the actual rocket thought to be obscured by the gas cloud of the X-37B (Supplied by Greg Roberts)
