By Zocalo Group
SAN DIEGO — Mysterious streaks of light streaking across the sky over the Sacramento, California, area on Friday night stunned St. Patrick’s Day revelers, who posted videos of the unusual sight on social media.
Jaime Hernandez was partying behind the King Cong Brewing Company in Sacramento when some in his group saw the lights. Hernandez recorded the phenomenon that ended in about 40 seconds, he said Saturday.
“We were stunned, but in awe that we got to see 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 claimed to have the answer. This astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in an interview with the Associated Press that he is 99.9% convinced that it is burning space debris.
McDowell said a Japanese communications package that transmitted information from the International Space Station to a satellite and from there to Earth became obsolete in 2017, when the satellite was retired. The 683-pound (310-kilogram) piece of equipment was ejected from the station in 2020 because it took up too much space and would be completely consumed in the atmosphere, he added.
The burning debris created a “light show in the sky,” McDowell said. He estimated that they were 40 miles (65 kilometers) high and were hurtling through the sky at thousands of miles (kilometers) per hour.
The US space force confirmed the re-entry path over California of the Interorbital Communication System and that the timing coincided with what people saw in the sky.
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