Bright Light Over San Francisco No Threat, Air Force Confirms [Photos, Videos]

Update: 2:10 a.m. EST — The University of California's Lick Observatory, near San Jose, wrote on its Facebook page that the cause of the bright streak of light over San Francisco on Wednesday evening was a meteor.
"A bright meteor was visible in the skies over the Bay Area shortly after sunset this evening, leaving a bright trail that was visible for many minutes in the western sky," the observatory said in the post.
Original story:
Many people on social media reported seeing a mysterious light and a trail of smoke in the sky above the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday evening.
According to a number of Twitter users, the phenomenon was seen around 5:30 p.m. local time (8:30 p.m. EST) but the source of the light was a mystery. While some thought it was a shooting star or comet near Citrus Heights, San Francisco, many others thought the smoke might have been the result of an explosion or a rocket launch.
“A bright object, hovered, made a loop, and fell in the sky above the ocean in San Francisco. What was that?” Dario Taraborelli tweeted.
Here are photos and videos of the mysterious lights posted online by several Twitter users.
Did you see that bright light in the sky? Here's the view from West Sacramento. pic.twitter.com/Q83JMy8PSg
— CBS Sacramento CBS13 (@CBSSacramento) December 20, 2018
Anyone know what this is in the sky over San Francisco? It looks like a rocket or an #explosion. Seen west of San Francisco airport #sfo. pic.twitter.com/6bQpcKKoTo
— Mike Downey (@mdowney) December 20, 2018
What just happened in the sky over San Francisco? pic.twitter.com/szMuy5fbc0
— L.J. Kid (@eljaykid) December 20, 2018
@NASA what did just happened in the Bay Area sky?@kron4news @CNN @SpaceX #bayarea #SanFrancisco #sanfranciscobayarea pic.twitter.com/RgrA6KqBeZ
— Bruno Solis (@brunosolis) December 20, 2018
Some space rock just disintegrated in the skies of San Francisco pic.twitter.com/xBlIL3gbML
— 👑KingMoyai🗿 🇺🇸 (@KingMoyai) December 20, 2018
Anyone know what this was falling out of the sky at 5:30 pm near @flySFO @SanBrunoPatch pic.twitter.com/cYASwTxzR3
— Aaron Woliczko (@AWoliczko) December 20, 2018
The lights were seen from as far as Sacramento, the Tahoe area, Santa Cruz and even Southern California.
A United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket was scheduled to launch Wednesday evening from the Vandenberg Air Force Base near Santa Barbara, but it was later scrubbed, with the next attempt to be made 24 hours later, the company announced.
While the source of the unusual light over the San Francisco sky remained unknown, North American Aerospace Defense Command Headquarters at Peterson U.S. Air Force Base in Colorado told NBC Bay Area it was not a threat to United States or Canada.
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