Some crazy lights and cloud formations created a mysterious celestial display around 6 am Friday morning in San Francisco skies, and it was all because of a SpaceX rocket launch that happened more than 300 miles away in Santa Barbara.

Those San Franciscans who were up and about around 6 am Friday morning got an unexpected and mysterious light show in the skies. Several of these people took to Reddit to post images, with messages like "Ummm what is this?," "CRAZY CLOUD THIS MORNING! Any news?," and "any idea what it was or could be from? Portal to mars?"

Woke up early to this in the sky any idea what it was or could be from? Portal to mars? Thanks!

byu/Mental_Marzipan6382 insanfrancisco

The mystery was quickly solved. As the Chronicle reports, the light show was from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch from Santa Barbara at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The rocket was deploying 23 Starlink satellites into orbit in a launch that took place at 6:07 am.

What we saw in the sky was actually exhaust trails (chemtrails???), as the video below from the National Weather Service Reno office illustrates pretty well. NBC Bay Area explains that the visual light displays we saw were actually "water vapor and tiny ice particles" with sunlight reflecting on them.

The trails were visible across Central California and Northern California, and NBC Los Angeles has some even better pictures from Southern California from photographers who were not far from the launch.

The rocket's booster has already returned to earth, reportedly landing on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean.