Light in the Sky Seen from California Feb 27 2026

[Mick West]

View from Lancaster, CA, looking East, at a very exact 5:47:26 PST this morning. Here's the view from that phone.

Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Opmn-RJ3pwlFOY-qGVqpsAlSKHFpiew-/view?usp=drivesdk

Seems to move too fast to be a contrail. It looks very much like a rocket. But which one?

Then this video, maybe from Helendale/Silver Lakes, CA, this morning. Reported 7 AM, but no precise time, and the sky (and object) look very much the same.

Source: https://x.com/uforyn/status/2027514092865655162

 

[Ravi]

I would say that the "fuzzy halo" around it looking like a "diabolo" is a give away it is not a plane. Leaves a rocket as the culprit?

 

[Matt33]

Google Gemini says:

The light you observed on February 27, 2026, at 5:47 PM PST was most likely the Firefly Alpha rocket launching on its "Stairway to Seven" mission.

Launch Details

• Rocket: Firefly Alpha (Flight 7).
• Company: Firefly Aerospace.
• Location: Launched from Space Launch Complex 2W at Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA.
• Visibility: Because the launch occurred just after sunset, it created a "Twilight Phenomenon" effect. While it was dark on the ground in Lancaster, the rocket's exhaust plume was high enough to be illuminated by the sun, causing the brilliant, glowing "jellyfish" display common with Southern California launches.
  

Why Not SpaceX?
While SpaceX did launch a Falcon 9 on February 27, that mission (Starlink 6-108) took place at 4:16 AM PST from Cape Canaveral, Florida, making it invisible from California in the evening. The next SpaceX launch from Vandenberg isn't scheduled until March 1st.

 

[Mick West]

Google Gemini says:

he light you observed on February 27, 2026, at 5:47 PM PST

It was 5:47 AM, not PM.

 

[Easy Muffin]

And more to the point, that rocket still sits firmly on the ground here on Earth despite what the AI believes. The mission was delayed by inclement weather conditions, it's currently slated to launch in about 14 hours from now.

 

[Matt33]

My bad, better double and triple check what the AI hallucinates.

 

[john.phil]

It was Starlink 6-108

source: https://flightclub.io/result/3d?simulationId=sim_1u1ount2q

 

[Mick West]

It was Starlink 6-108

Nice! I used that to create a view from Lancaster, pretty much a perfect match:

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/Starlink 6-108 From lancaster/20260228_194759.js

This uses their free path tracker https://flightclub.io/path-tracker, I added code to extrapolate any imported flightclub track by two orbits. This is an extrapolation, and does not account for any orbit adjustment burns, so it might not be 100%.