Observers in the southwestern United States saw what appeared to be a fireball fragmenting in the night sky, however it was discovered that the shooting star was man-made and not a result of three meteor showers that were already occurring.
The American Meteor Society has received dozens of reports on a fireball occurrence that happened between Saturday night and Sunday morning from Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Images and videos depict a luminous trail with several incandescent fragments traveling through the sky. According to some, the spectacle resembled “fireworks.”
Frisco, Texas, is where the video at the top of the story was shot.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and expert in orbital debris, said the flare was a SpaceX Starlink internet satellite, one of several launched in 2022. In order to give internet connectivity globally, SpaceX has thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit around the planet. In order to keep more abandoned spacecraft from clogging low-Earth orbit, these satellites were built to reenter Earth’s atmosphere after the conclusion of their missions.
The satellite came down tracking across Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Idaho, and McDowell commented on X that it “appears to have been widely observed.”
The flaming display in the sky coincides with several active meteor showers. November is when the Leonids and Southern and Northern Taurid meteor showers are most active.