Meteor
In this representation image, a Perseid meteor streaks across the sky over the community of Cold Creek in the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area, Nevada, Aug. 12, 2015. Getty Images/ Ethan Miller

Update: 2:10 a.m. EST — The University of California's Lick Observatory, near San Jose, wrote on its Facebook page that the cause of the bright streak of light over San Francisco on Wednesday evening was a meteor.

"A bright meteor was visible in the skies over the Bay Area shortly after sunset this evening, leaving a bright trail that was visible for many minutes in the western sky," the observatory said in the post.

Original story:

Many people on social media reported seeing a mysterious light and a trail of smoke in the sky above the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday evening.

According to a number of Twitter users, the phenomenon was seen around 5:30 p.m. local time (8:30 p.m. EST) but the source of the light was a mystery. While some thought it was a shooting star or comet near Citrus Heights, San Francisco, many others thought the smoke might have been the result of an explosion or a rocket launch.

“A bright object, hovered, made a loop, and fell in the sky above the ocean in San Francisco. What was that?” Dario Taraborelli tweeted.

Here are photos and videos of the mysterious lights posted online by several Twitter users.

The lights were seen from as far as Sacramento, the Tahoe area, Santa Cruz and even Southern California.

A United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket was scheduled to launch Wednesday evening from the Vandenberg Air Force Base near Santa Barbara, but it was later scrubbed, with the next attempt to be made 24 hours later, the company announced.

While the source of the unusual light over the San Francisco sky remained unknown, North American Aerospace Defense Command Headquarters at Peterson U.S. Air Force Base in Colorado told NBC Bay Area it was not a threat to United States or Canada.

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