A bright, mysterious flash of light was seen rocketing over Trinidad Thursday Afternoon.
North Coast News reports that their videographer Halcyon Simmons recorded the above video while filming a weather shot. But it wasn’t until viewers started calling in after the station’s evening broadcast that they realized what Simmons captured.
“WATCH: What appears to be a meteor swept through the sky, visible during the day at the beach in Trinidad,” North Coast News wrote on Facebook. “What do you think it was?”
LoCO decided to get to the bottom of this, so we reached out to our new friend Humboldt State University Physics and Astronomy professor C.D. Hoyle.
“Hmmm, you know it totally could be a meteor, and most likely is, but the way it almost regularly flashes makes me think it could also be reflections from a man-made satellite or the International Space Station,” Hoyle said via email yesterday. “There were a few passes near Trinidad yesterday but I’d have to know the exact time to see if it is a possibility. It is going too fast to be anything else I believe.”
North Coast News told LoCO that their footage was recorded around 4 p.m. According to Hoyle, the closest time a satellite passed over Humboldt County that day was between 3:00 and 3:05 p.m.
Well, sounds like a big ol’ fiery rock shot over our heads this week, Humboldt. Either that, or it’s aliens. … Probably aliens.