‘Meteor’ Spotted Over Los Angeles Turns out to Be Stunt for Supermoon

The "Supermoon" rises over the Rio de la Plata as seen from Buenos Aires on Feb. 19, 2019. Alejandro Pagni/AFP/Getty Images

A streak of light was spotted over downtown Los Angeles on the night of March 20, but it wasn’t a meteor or a missile.

The Los Angeles Police Department wrote: “PSA: A meteor did not crash into Downtown Los Angeles, and no, it’s not an alien invasion…just a film shoot.”

It added that “this is Tinseltown after all.”

But a number of videos and tweets speculated as to what the streak was.

“What is this flying item on fire above downtown Los Angeles?” wrote Dennis Hegstad on the social media network.

“Did anyone else see that meteor over Downtown Los Angeles??,” asked Twitter user @elliseckles.

Added another: “Saw a meteor burn through the sky of LA today.”

The LAPD tweet didn’t address actually what it was, so Red Bull clarified.

Energy drink maker Red Bull said its Red Bull Air Force celebrated the third supermoon of the year by placing skydivers in suits to jump from a helicopter.

“In order to mark the occasion, some of the most experienced skydivers, BASE jumpers and freeflyers on the planet in the Red Bull Air Force took to the skies above the famous American city for the aerial flight,” it said.

“To add a touch of Hollywood glitz, the suits were fitted with LED lights and sparking pyrotechnics that lit up the night sky as the sun set and the supermoon rose,” said Red Bull.

Despite the clarification from police and Red Bull, people still believed it was a meteor.

Massive Meteor Explosion Went Unnoticed

Hurtling towards the earth 30 times faster than a rifle bullet, a 1,400-ton fireball exploded with the energy of 10 Hiroshima bombs in a blinding flash on the night of Dec 18, 2018, becoming the third largest meteor impact in modern times.

However, the explosion, 15.5 miles above the remote Bering Sea, had no witnesses and was picked up only on NASA instruments, which had held onto their secret until now.

The location of the meteor fireball in the Bering Sea that exploded on Dec. 18, 2018. Screenshot/Googlemaps

This Bright Leonid Fireball Is Shown During The Storm Of 1966 In The Sky Above Wrightwood, Calif. Nasa/Getty Images

On March 8, meteor scientist Peter Brown pointed to the latest data release, which showed the massive explosion near the Kamchatka Peninsula, in Russia’s far-east, just before midnight.

“Object was 10 meters (33 feet) diameter, mass 1400T,  and impacted with an energy of 173 kilotons of TNT,” Brown wrote on Twitter.

“It would have been quite spectacular,” Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen’s University Belfast, UK, told the New Scientist. “When you see these infrasound waves, you know immediately that there has been an impact or a large release of energy.”

The Epoch Times reporter Simon Veazey contributed to this report.