Strange, misty lights keep being spotted in the sky across the country, with residents wondering what they could be.
Videos of the lights have been posted online from various states, including one by Reddit user u/DecimusMeridius007 in Northern California on October 31, and another by user @GardnerGoodyear of the Arizona sky on Twitter on October 28.
“Seen the light from Goodyear Arizona. Pretty cool to see from our backyard!” Twitter user @GardnerGoodyear, who filmed the video of the lights, told Newsweek.
These lights have been seen many times previously, just after the launch of SpaceX rockets. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, tweeted out a picture of the lights over Los Angeles, taking responsibility for the display.
“We thought it was a slow-moving comet at first then later found out it was a SpaceX rocket,” said @GardnerGoodyear.
The Falcon family of rockets are SpaceX’s reusable rockets and the first of their kind. The first stage boosters of the launch vehicle are designed to re-land after their fuel is expended and be reused, as opposed to the boosters of previous missions that are jettisoned and fall into the ocean. They are often recovered by ships and refurbished, but this is a lot more expensive and time-consuming.
“Reusability allows SpaceX to re-fly the most expensive parts of the rocket, which in turn drives down the cost of space access,” the SpaceX website states.
The lights were likely that of an October 27 mission to deliver 53 Starlink broadband satellites into orbit via a Falcon 9 rocket that lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
As it ascended out of the atmosphere, the rocket and its plumes could be seen for miles, likely leading to sightings in both California and Arizona. According to SpaceX, this was the eighth launch and landing for this Falcon 9 first-stage booster, which also previously launched the DART mission to binary asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos.
@GardnerGoodyear on Twitter
The spectacular jellyfish-like lights are caused by sunlight reflecting off the rocket’s exhaust plume at high altitudes. This mostly occurs around sunrise or sunset due to sunlight coming over the horizon.
“As the launch goes up, the exhaust [plume] expands in the light part of the atmosphere and the sunlight is then reflected off of some of that moisture and some of the other leftovers from the launch,” 10 Tampa Bay meteorologist Grant Gilmore previously said in reference to similar displays in May this year.
On November 1, SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida for the first time in three years, according to CNBC, carrying a classified payload for the U.S. Space Force named USSF-44.
