Fireball in CA was Russian Rocket Debris

Caption + A streak of light is seen over an apartment complex in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2015.

The fireball triggered its own firestorm on social media, as observers on the ground shared videos and photos of it flying through the sky and pondered whether it was a shooting star, a meteor or a fallen satellite. Pictures and videos of the object showed it as a bright white streak that began to break apart into many smaller streaks after about 30 seconds.

The same skies in the western United States became the site of a similar unidentified object when the U.S. Navy launched a Trident II missile from off the California coast in November.

The booster, launched Monday in Russian Federation, could be seen from Mexico to Las Vegas as it fell back to Earth.

U.S. Strategic Command said the light was caused by a Russian SL-4 rocket body that reentered the atmosphere somewhere above Arizona at around 7:08 p.m. MT (9:08 p.m. ET).

“I was upset I couldn’t grab my real camera”, he said.

Light pollution over major metro areas might make such a flash of light hard to see. The rocket delivered into orbit the latest modification of Russian cargo spacecraft, Progress-MS-01 (first unit), with almost 2.5 tons of supplies, including food, fuel and compressed oxygen, for the expedition aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

“It makes sense that people are skeptical”, Thoburn said.