Mysterious objects streak through Oregon skies
PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — People in the Pacific Northwest were stunned, thrilled and maybe a little frightened Thursday night as they witnessed some mysterious objects in the sky.
Reports from people seeing the objects came in from everywhere in the Northwest and at least as far north as Seattle. Many people reported seeing it around 9 p.m.
(Check out some of the many videos submitted by KATU viewers further down in this story)
What precisely the object, or objects, was has not been confirmed, but the National Weather Service in Seattle said it may have been debris from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that did not have a successful “deorbit burn.”
That theory has been backed up by Dr. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the center for astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian.
“We’ve been expecting this rocket stage to re-enter sometime in the next few hours and so it was a pretty quick calculation for me, like a minute to bring up the orbit data and confirm that yes– at pretty much exactly 9 p.m. Pacific it would’ve been over the Pacific Northwest,” Dr. McDowell said.
Jim Todd, OMSI’s space expert, told KATU that his gut reaction after seeing video of the objects was, “This is definitely man-made.”
“How long it took to burn up, that’s classic of a man made (object). How long it was burning up and how it was breaking apart — where a meteor goes much faster,” he said. “This is a rare event. We have anticipated this, maybe, but this has caught everybody by surprise, and we have the right conditions to see it tonight. It was visible as far as Seattle to Boise to Bend to Portland.”
Photographs and videos on social media and sent to KATU News showed what appeared to be a dozen or more objects moving together across the sky.
“Once you see the videos which is classic space debris break up it wasn’t hard to put two into together and go yeah this is definitely the SpaceX rocket stage that was breaking up,” said Dr. McDowell.
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Adam Miller said he was out for a walk with his wife in Tigard when he saw a bright light coming over Bull Mountain. He said it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“Absolutely crazy,” he told KATU. “I’m also a retired police officer, so I’ve seen some really crazy things in my life. I used to work along the U.S.-Mexico border. I’ve seen all kinds of stuff happening, with drones and flares launched in the air and aircraft as such, and even with flying, I’ve never seen anything [like it]. It was almost surreal.”
Many witnesses described the same thing — that it looked like a helicopter that may have been coming in low, and then it broke up into hundreds of lights that streaked across the sky.
