Mysterious streak of sunshine throughout the Bay Area defined

Curious mild streaking the sky seen all through the Bay Area, captured on video

KTVU is getting calls, in addition to picture and video submissions, of what seems to be a meteor that streaked throughout the sky Thursday night. The calls have been coming from all through the Bay Area. Officials with Lick Observatory of Mount Hamilton instructed us one in all their workers was an eyewitness to the spectacle at round 7:45 p.m.

OAKLAND, Calif. – A mysterious mild streaking the Bay Area sky on Thursday night time sparked the curiosity of those that witnessed it and those that are seeing the movies on-line.

Was it a meteor? A chunk of fireplace particles? 

Sarah Nelson, a spokeswoman from the Chabot Space & Science Center, instructed KTVU on Friday that one of many heart’s astronomers stated the sunshine was a bit of house junk – which might finally be linked to Elon Musk. 

The mild, she stated, was the re-entry of the higher stage of a SpaceX rocket that launched a gaggle of Starlink satellites a number of years in the past.

When SpaceX launches Starlink satellites, the higher stage of the Falcon rocket pushes the satellites into their preliminary orbit, the astronomer stated, after which releases them. 

The higher stage then turns into, primarily, a bit of house junk. 

The astronomer defined that the piece of house junk is in an elliptical orbit round Earth, which slowly decays. 

Eventually, after a number of years, the higher stage will get so low that atmospheric drag causes it to fall out of orbit and re-enter the ambiance, the place dynamic stress causes it to burn and break up. 

“That was what everyone saw last night,” Nelson stated. 

Starlink is the venture of Space X that Musk based. It’s a satellite tv for pc community that gives high-speed broadband web service throughout the globe. 

Meteors are often a lot quicker and finish with a flash of sunshine. 

The mild was not the SpaceX Starlink launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, Nelson stated.

The SpaceX launch on Thursday was at 9:26 p.m., which was about two hours after the mysterious streak of sunshine.