Space junk soaring through Utah sky astonishes residents

Incredible.
 By 
Nicole Gallucci
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

On Wednesday night, a video recorded by a Panguitch, Utah resident captured a stunning display of lights soaring across the night sky.

While many onlookers believed the spectacle to be a meteor shower, astronomer Jonathan McDowell shared on Twitter that the curious sight was in fact space junk believed to have come from a spent body from one of China's rockets.

As the falling rocket debris continued to break up, spectators were in awe of the colorful streaks of light seen flying across the sky.


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McDowell wrote several tweets, explaining the rocket stage re-entering was a result of the "launch of the CZ-7, one of China's new generation of rockets" and highlighting that 25 other re-entries of significant weight have occurred thus far in 2016.

Several other videos were posted to social media by confused people in the western United States who were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the burning space junk.

Topics X/Twitter

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Nicole Gallucci

Nicole is a Senior Editor at Mashable. She primarily covers entertainment and digital culture trends, and in her free time she can be found watching TV, sending voice notes, or going viral on Twitter for admiring knitwear. You can follow her on Twitter @nicolemichele5.

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