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Mysterious lights in California sky identified as satellites

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May 16 (UPI) -- Mysterious lights that prompted reports of UFO sightings in the sky over California were identified by experts as Starlink satellites.

Numerous residents of the Sacramento area reported a line of bright lights in the night sky to local media outlets, with some asking whether the lights were visiting star ships from another world.

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Kyle Watters, the director of the Sacramento State Planetarium, said the lights had a more down-to-earth explanation -- they were from 56 Starlink satellites launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

"They eventually will end up in an orbit high enough where they're basically invisible to the naked eye, but shortly after they're launched, they're kind of making their way up into higher and higher orbit," Watters told CBS Sacramento. "And so they're much lower down than they'll eventually be, which means they're close to us on the surface, which means they're brighter."

Watters said the satellites are particularly visible in the night sky just after sunset and just before sunrise.

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