Mysterious streaks of light were seen in the sky over the Sacramento area on Friday night, startling St. Patrick’s Day revelers who later posted videos of the startling sight on social media.
Mysterious streaks of light were seen in the sky over the Sacramento area on Friday night, startling St. Patrick’s Day revelers who later posted videos of the startling sight on social media.
Jaime Hernandez was at the King Cong Brewing Company in Sacramento for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration when members of the group noticed the lights. Hernandez quickly began filming. It was over in about 40 seconds, he said on Saturday.
“Mostly, we were shocked, but in awe that we got to witness it,” Hernandez said in an email. “None of us had ever seen anything like it.”
The brewery owner posted the video of Hernandez on Instagram and asked if anyone could solve the mystery.
Jonathan McDowell says it can. McDowell is an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press that he is 99.9% confident that the light rays are coming from burning space debris.
McDowell said a Japanese communications package that transmitted information from the International Space Station to a communications satellite and then back to Earth became obsolete in 2017 when the satellite was retired. The equipment, which weighed 310 kilograms (683 pounds), was jettisoned from the space station in 2020 because it took up valuable space and would burn up completely upon reentry, McDowell added.
The burning wreckage created a “spectacular light show in the sky,” McDowell said. He estimated that the debris was about 40 miles high, moving at thousands of miles per hour.
The US Space Force confirmed the re-entry route over California for the Inter-Orbit Communication System, and the timing is consistent with what people saw in the sky, he added. The Space Force could not immediately be reached Saturday with questions.
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McDermott reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
