Curious light streaking the sky seen throughout the Bay Area, captured on video
KTVU is getting calls, as well as photo and video submissions, of what appears to be a meteor that streaked across the sky Thursday evening. The calls have been coming from throughout the Bay Area. Officials with Lick Observatory of Mount Hamilton told us one of their staff was an eyewitness to the spectacle at around 7:45 p.m.
OAKLAND, Calif. – A mysterious light streaking the Bay Area sky on Thursday night sparked the curiosity of those who witnessed it and those who are seeing the videos online.
Was it a meteor? A piece of fire debris?
Sarah Nelson, a spokeswoman from the Chabot Space & Science Center, told KTVU on Friday that one of the center’s astronomers said the light was a piece of space junk – which can ultimately be linked to Elon Musk.
The light, she said, was the re-entry of the upper stage of a SpaceX rocket that launched a group of Starlink satellites several years ago.
When SpaceX launches Starlink satellites, the upper stage of the Falcon rocket pushes the satellites into their initial orbit, the astronomer said, and then releases them.
The upper stage then becomes, essentially, a piece of space junk.
The astronomer explained that the piece of space junk is in an elliptical orbit around Earth, which slowly decays.
Eventually, after a few years, the upper stage gets so low that atmospheric drag causes it to fall out of orbit and re-enter the atmosphere, where dynamic pressure causes it to burn and break up.
“That was what everyone saw last night,” Nelson said.
Starlink is the project of Space X that Musk founded. It’s a satellite network that provides high-speed broadband internet service across the globe.
Meteors are usually much faster and end with a flash of light.
The light was not the SpaceX Starlink launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, Nelson said.
The SpaceX launch on Thursday was at 9:26 p.m., which was about two hours after the mysterious streak of light.