At around 6.30am local Las Vegas time, something odd appeared in the sky.

Some people took to twitter claiming it was unequivocally a UFO. Or perhaps, more accurately, proof of aliens.

Others thought that Santa was making a quick dry-run before the big night.

U.S. military officials say a streak of light seen burning across the sky was in fact debris from a Russian rocket re-entering the atmosphere.

U.S. Strategic Command spokesperson Julie Ziegenhorn didn't confirm the ultimate fate of the SL-4 rocket body booster from Russia that launched Monday, but an assistant professor of planetary science at Caltech, Konstantin Batygin, told Buzzfeed that “I think this thing disintegrated in the atmosphere and just burned up."

video via Associated Press