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The Northstate's Enigmatic Lights

Hundreds of Shasta County locals saw strange lights over the Northstate on Friday night.

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KRCR's Chief Photographer Adam McAllister was in Redding, Calif.

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when he witnessed the lights in the sky at around 9:30 p.m. He managed to capture the moment on camera.

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However, the mysterious lights have a somewhat simple explanation

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Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says

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The lights are from the Japanese Inter-orbit Communications System Exposed Facility

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 which sends data between the ISS Kibo module and Mission Control Tsukuba via the Kodama data relay satellite.

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After three years as space junk, McDowell says it reentered over California at 9:30 p.m.

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The rubble burned from Eureka to Sacramento.

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