{"id":184584,"date":"2025-09-27T04:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T04:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/184584\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T04:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T04:57:07","slug":"fiery-streak-stuns-northern-california-sky-was-it-a-meteor-or-space-junk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/184584\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiery streak stuns Northern California sky. Was it a meteor \u2014 or space junk?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A fiery streak lit up Northern California\u2019s night sky Thursday evening, dazzling onlookers from Sonoma County to the Sacramento region.<\/p>\n<p>The blazing object appeared around 7:45 p.m., sparking speculation over whether it was a meteor, rocket launch, or satellite debris. NASA\u2019s Meteoroid Environment Office did not immediately respond to inquiries, but experts say the spectacle was likely not a natural meteor. <a href=\"https:\/\/fireball.amsmeteors.org\/members\/imo_view\/event\/2025\/6246\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Aerospace Corp.<\/a>, a Southern California nonprofit research and development center that tracks orbital debris, predicted several Starlink satellites would reenter Earth\u2019s atmosphere Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fireball.amsmeteors.org\/members\/imo_view\/event\/2025\/6246\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dozens of people<\/a> across the North Bay reported seeing the fiery trail.<\/p>\n<p>In Occidental, artisan vendor Jessy McGibbons was packing up her booth at the farmers market when the crowd began pointing skyward.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLast time everybody made the same noise because of a double rainbow, so I immediately looked up at the sky,\u201d she said. She saw a glowing ball streak across the sky, pulled out her phone and began recording. \u201cIt was only my second time as a vendor. \u201cLast time it was a double rainbow and then it was a meteor show. What are we gonna see next time?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Cloverdale, Matt Kellogg and his family were celebrating his father\u2019s 72nd birthday when his niece spotted the glow.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe saw this blazing sort of fireball going from west to east, almost straight across the sky,\u201d Kellogg said. \u201cIt was wild.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He described the object as bright and sparkling, with fragments breaking off.<\/p>\n<p>His son, Theo, caught a video, though Kellogg said the recording didn\u2019t do it justice. The sight reminded him of the way the Autobots arrive on Earth in the \u201cTransformers\u201d movies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve never seen anything like it before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Sightings of the fiery reentry were also reported from Rocklin, Shingle Springs, Salida and the Sacramento area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fiery streak lit up Northern California\u2019s night sky Thursday evening, dazzling onlookers from Sonoma County to the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[108696,79,193],"class_list":["post-184584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-meteor-fireball-sonoma-county","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}