Bay Area Residents Report Strange Lights In The Sky Saturday

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — A trail of odd lights moved across the night sky over the Bay Area on Saturday night, evoking some head-scratching from residents.

Despite recent coverage of UFO sightings in the Golden State, experts say the lights were a lingering effect from a chain of low-flying SpaceX Starlink satellites. The company has been launching more satellites lately as part of an initiative to bring high-speed internet access to people living in rural, hard-to-reach areas, according to the program's website.

SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, launched 52 satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 15 and has fired off more than 600 of its 12,000 planned satellites, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

A resident astronomer at Lick Observatory near San Jose told the Chronicle that Saturday night's sightings were likely from a May 9 launch "catching and reflecting sunlight either in the couple hours after sunset or before sunrise."

"Such sightings are becoming more common as SpaceX continues to populate its constellation apace," he added.

what was this line of star like objects in a line that just went overhead? pic.twitter.com/m1SWOAxGht
— Jared Katzman (@jaredkatzman) May 23, 2021

Earlier this month, people across the nation spotted these threads of light. Callers swamped TV stations from Texas to Wisconsin, reporting the lights and musing about UFOs.

The number of lights in quick succession and their distance from Earth make them easily identifiable as Starlink satellites for those who are used to seeing them, astronomers said.

"The way you can tell they are Starlink satellites is they are like a string of pearls, these lights traveling in the same basic orbit, one right after the other," said Dr. Richard Fienberg, press officer for the American Astronomical Society.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.