Mysterious Streaks of Light Over Sacramento Finally Solved
On Friday night, residents of the Sacramento area were shocked to witness mysterious streaks of light in the sky. Videos of the surprising sight were quickly posted on social media, with many wondering what could have caused the strange phenomenon.
One St. Patrick’s Day reveler, Jaime Hernandez, was at the King Cong Brewing Company in Sacramento when some members of his group noticed the lights. Hernandez quickly began filming the event, which lasted about 40 seconds. “Mainly, we were in shock, but amazed that we got to witness it,” Hernandez said in an email. “None of us had ever seen anything like it.”
The brewery owner posted Hernandez’s video on Instagram, asking if anyone could solve the mystery. Fortunately, Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, was able to provide an explanation.
McDowell was 99.9% confident that the streaks of light were from burning space debris. According to him, a Japanese communications package that was used to relay 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 then jettisoned from the space station in 2020 because it was taking up valuable space and would burn up completely upon reentry.
The flaming bits of wreckage created a “spectacular light show in the sky,” McDowell said. He estimated that the debris was about 40 miles high, traveling thousands of miles per hour. The U.S. Space Force confirmed the re-entry path over California for the Inter-Orbit Communication System, and the timing is consistent with what people saw in the sky, he added.
This explanation finally puts an end to the mystery that had residents of the Sacramento area scratching their heads. Many can now rest easy knowing that what they witnessed was simply debris from space burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
