Overview

• More than 200 people reported a bright fireball across Northern California on Thursday evening, with sightings from San Francisco to Reno starting around 7:50 p.m.
• Eyewitness videos show a long, white‑orange trail moving eastward that broke into multiple pieces while crossing the sky.
• The American Meteor Society attributed the event to a Starlink satellite falling back to Earth, based on observations and reentry forecasts.
• The Aerospace Corporation’s tracking data listed multiple Starlink objects predicted to reenter that night, supporting the attribution.
• Experts note natural meteors travel around 67,000 mph versus roughly 17,500 mph for human‑made debris, and a tight cluster of similar bright points strongly indicates a reentry breakup; SpaceX had not commented.