BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Widespread reports and videos of a fiery trail spotted in the sky over south Louisiana left many wondering what they saw just after 10 p.m. Saturday night. Was it a comet? Santa Claus is doing a test run? Or maybe something else? The trail is clearly visible in this video submitted by WAFB viewer Montrice Davis.

As of late Saturday evening, there is no official determination, but my educated guess is that the trail was “space debris.” This may make you ask: What is space debris? Here’s what NASA says about space debris:

“There are millions of pieces of space junk flying in LEO. Most orbiting debris is man-made objects, such as parts of spacecraft, tiny specks of paint from spacecraft, parts of rockets, satellites that no longer function, or explosions from orbiting objects traveling at high speeds in space flying around.”

Late Saturday evening, astronomer Jonathan McDowell provided evidence that the fiery trail likely came from a decommissioned commercial satellite called GaoJing 1-02 that re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.

The American Meteor Society keeps a log of reports of “fireballs,” or bright meteors. Although I suspect that the trail seen Saturday evening was space debris and not a meteor, the AMS website shows that it was seen in several southern states, from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to perhaps as far south as Tennessee.

Did you see the fiery trail on Saturday evening? Share your pictures and videos on 9Reports.

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