West Virginians report seeing bright light Tuesday night, and it wasn’t a meteor

BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. (WBOY) — Even though the night of Aug. 12 was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, the light that caught the most attention in West Virginia and across the East Coast wasn’t a fireball.

A 12 News viewer in Bridgeport, West Virginia reported seeing a strange, spiral-shaped light in the night sky around 10:30 p.m. Others across the East Coast, from central Pennsylvania

to New Jersey and Michigan, also reported seeing similar lights. According to reports, the light stayed in the sky briefly and seemed to have clouds or smoke moving around it.

The light was likely from the Vulcan Centaur rocket, a powerful rocket launched by the United Launch Alliance on behalf of the U.S. military from Cape Canaveral, Florida Tuesday night. According to multiple space news sources, the launch took place just before 9 p.m. EDT on Aug. 12. It was the U.S. military’s first experimental navigation satellite to be launched in 48 years, according to Space.com.

It is not uncommon for West Virginians to see rockets that were launched from Florida. Just last year, 12 News received dozens of reports and photos of the Falcon 9 rocket, which launched from Cape Canaveral on Sept. 10, 2024.