It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s just space trash!
California residents near the Bay Area were left shocked and puzzled when streaks of lights were suddenly spotted in the sky during Friday’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
Viral video of the phenomenon had many quickly jumping on the idea of UFOs or another one of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites launching, but famed astronomer Jonathan McDowell said it was nothing more than space junk burning up in the atmosphere.
McDowell, of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the lights were caused by debris tossed from the International Space Station in 2020, which remained in orbit for years before finally crashing.
“It probably almost completely burnt up during re-entry, but any small surviving debris may have, at a guess, reached the Yosemite area,” McDowell tweeted in his explanation.
Read more at https://nypost.com/2023/03/21/mystery-lights-over-california-were-iss-space-trash/
#california #caughtoncamera #spacejunk
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