Photo: Dneutral Han / Moment / Getty Images
LOS ANGELES (CNS) - What exactly were those lights that streaked across the Southland sky early Tuesday morning?
In short, nobody yet knows.
The lights were visible over most of the region around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. Video shows what appears to be a cluster of objects streaking over the area -- possibly a cluster of meteorites or more likely some type of object breaking up as it plummets toward the Earth.
Some speculation quickly arose that the lights might have been connected to a SpaceX rocket launch that occurred Monday night from Vandenberg Space Force Base on the Central Coast. But that launch occurred around 7:30 p.m., long before the mystery lights appeared.
Online speculators seemed to coalesce Tuesday around the idea that some type of space junk such as an old rocket booster had simply fallen to Earth, breaking up as it re-entered the atmosphere and creating the impressive display.