Partygoers in Sacramento, California spotted strange streaks of light in the night skies on Friday.
Revellers enjoying St Patrick's Day celebrations posted videos on social media of the mysterious occurrence.
Jaime Hernandez recorded a 40-second video of the lights in the sky while he was having a night out with friends at the King Cong Brewing Company in Sacramento.
"Mainly, we were in shock, but amazed that we got to witness it," Hernandez wrote.
"None of us had ever seen anything like it."
The Brewery's owner uploaded Hernandez's video to Instagram, pleading for an explanation.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told The Associated Press he was confident the lights were just space debris burning up upon re-entry to the atmosphere at about 65km above Earth's surface.
The space junk was likely a Japanese communications package relaying information from the International Space Station (ISS) to a communications satellite that was retired in 2017, McDowell said.
At 310kg it was apparently using up valuable space and so it was ejected from the ISS in 2020.
The US Space Force confirmed the satellite's burning debris would re-enter Earth over California, adding the timing was consistent with what the public saw in the sky on Friday night (US time).
