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SALT LAKE CITY — Numerous Utahns reported seeing lights streak across the state's night sky Wednesday.

KSL meteorologist Kevin Eubank confirmed the phenomenon is due to space junk entering the atmosphere. The junk was being tracked online, Eubank said.

The lights are not a meteor, he said.

Seth Jarvis, director of Clark Planetarium, said space junk is common but not commonly seen by large groups of people.

"While they’re fairly common occurrences, they’re not necessarily common occurrences at a time of day when a lot of people are out and about and over an area with a big population," Jarvis said.

The re-entry of space junk into the Earth's atmosphere is unpredictable, he said.

WOW! I just happened to be at the right place w/ my photographer to capture this in the sky over #WJ@KSL5TVpic.twitter.com/gp2giBIplX — Nicole Vowell (@NicoleVowellKSL) July 28, 2016

> Full video of meteor-like event [@BadAstronomer](https://twitter.com/BadAstronomer) [pic.twitter.com/q37UzRZKpa](https://t.co/q37UzRZKpa) > > — Matt Holt (@mholt6) [July 28, 2016](https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/758523437979570177)

"It just as easily could have come down over … Yukon or the southern Pacific," Jarvis said.

Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer Jonathan McDowell reported on Twitter that the junk belonged to a Chinese rocket dubbed Chang Zheng 7.

Patrick Wiggins, a NASA local ambassador based in Utah, also confirmed that the sighting was a re-entry of a Chinese rocket.

He said predictions from calsky.com said it would be passing over northern Utah between about 10:36 and 10:42 p.m.

Jarvis said space junk isn't as wild as it may seem.

"There are agencies that keep track of these things and look out for the larger ones but they're not always predictable. So sometimes you will just randomly, a few times per year, depending on where you are in the world, see some big thing come in across the sky," he said.

The Associated Press reported the rocket re-entered the atmosphere near California.

Contributing: Geoffrey Thatcher, Linda Williams

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