Colorado skies have served up some pretty incredible sights for sky watchers over the last few weeks, from the Lyrid Meteor Shower to a rare appearance of the Aurora Borealis. The celestial spectacles continued on Thursday night, when the American Meteor Society (AMS) received 20 accounts from Coloradans that reported seeing “strange lights” streak across the sky.

The lights were first seen as early as 2 AM on April 27 in Gypsum, Conifer, Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Aurora, Pueblo West, Perry Park, Castle Rock, Commerce City, Palisade, Denver, Montrose, and Arboles. People in Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico also reported seeing event.

Here are some of the reports that were submitted:

“This was like 10 times bigger than a regular meteor and the trail lasted longer,” one witness who saw the lights from Gypsum reported.

“I observed a fan-like trail behind the meteorite while fireball was still bright and visible. Smaller fragments were observed in the trail. Trail was at least double the width of the fireball and at least 3-4 times in length. However, trail disappeared after fire ball disintegrated into smaller fragments,” Deborah K. from Arboles said. 

“Until the meteor fragmented I thought it was a low flying plane with landing lights full on, although smoke trail was visible and it was oscillating slightly. Its path seemed to be almost level after I first saw it just above the Rampart Range hills (9000ft) to my west,” said Ted from Perry Park. 

Below find a video captured by a viewer in New Mexico. 

As it turns out, these strange lights weren’t the start of an alien invasion – there was a perfectly logical explanation.

“This event was not a natural fireball but rather an uncontrolled space debris reentry from the SpaceX Endurance 2 mission launched Oct 5, 2022,” AMS said.

According to a report by News Week the SpaceX Endurance 2 mission brought four astronauts from the International Space Station back to earth in March.

“On Mar 12 the SpaceX Crew-5 Dragon jettisoned its trunk section into a 300 x 410 km orbit. The trunk, object 55840, made an uncontrolled reentry last night at 0852 UTC = 0252 MDT = 0152 MST on a track from Phoenix to Colorado Springs. The reentry breakup was widely seen,” astrophysicist for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Jonathan McDowell, said in a tweet on Thursday. 

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