I'm not saying it was aliens but...

[BobDDuck]

A lot of us have seen the odd racetrack type lights at night, generally to the northeast. Spent about an hour watching them last night coming back from Japan and actually got some interesting pictures of them. The RO and I were talking about it and the consensus seems to be we hope that it gets figured out what they are sometime, but in the meantime it's kind of cool to look at and wonder about.

This is a composite of 4 images, each with a 5 second exposure. I have a 2 second delay on my shutter (so don't introduce motion when I take my finger of the shutter button) so the gaps in the lines are the space between each exposure. The jittery images (blue and reddish) are stars (somebody who better understands light waves can explain why they tint that way... something about the bandwidths of each part of the color spectrum). The mostly horizontal image is a what a normal starlink (I think?) satellite looks like, with constant brightness. There are three vertical light trails in the shot. The two dimmer ones were not visible to the naked eye, and I only saw them when I was compositing the image. The super bright one was very noticeable. It traveled downward. It was visible above the starting point in this image (I just didn't get the camera capturing fast enough to get anything prior), but faded out of sight suddenly at the end.

This is also a composite of 4 images, each with a 5 second exposure and 2 seconds between each image. It has been brightened a bunch and was shot at 3200 ISO to begin with. There are a whole bunch (8 I can count) parallel light streaks in the horizontal, and then one horizontal light streak that isn't parallel with the others. There are several vertical light streaks, but the obvious bright one was the only thing visible to the naked eye. Again, it changed in brightness over the course of the capture with it being super bright for about 4 seconds in the middle. The blur and candy corn looking thing on the left side of the image is reflections from inside the cockpit.

 

[ASpilot2be]

Great shots! I have yet to see them myself, but I have heard people ask about them on the radio.

 

[BEEF SUPREME]

I’ve been watching them since about November. From the Western US they are usually on a 300-320 heading and about 10-20 deg above the horizon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Minuteman]

The RO and I were talking about it and the consensus seems to be we hope that it gets figured out what they are sometime

Do you know about Heavens Above? It's a German DLR site where you can enter a location and it will give you a list of visible satellites for that morning/evening.

Satellites (if that's what they are) will be most-visible about an hour after sunset and an hour before sunrise, when you are in darkness, but the satellites are not.

The "brightness" value is relative to the moon if it were the same size, smaller numbers are brighter, negative numbers are brighter than the equivalent-sized moon. In urban areas, only things brighter than ~0.75 are visible. Away from places with street lights and you can see brighter than 4.0 with only your eyes in most cases. After that you'd have to go out over the ocean to see dimmer satellites.

Iridium and Muskelites are so prevalent they have their own section on the site.

Daily predictions for brighter satellites

Satellite predictions and other astronomical data customised for your location.

www.heavens-above.com

What do you mean "racetrack?"

 

[ArcherII]

Oh boy, r/UFO would be all over this.

 

[PenguinAviator]

HNL-SEA redeye always has a spicy light show

 

[BobDDuck]

Do you know about Heavens Above? It's a German DLR site where you can enter a location and it will give you a list of visible satellites for that morning/evening.

Yes. I've used it before. StarLink satellites are so numerous that pretty much anything you see in the sky could be one of them.

What do you mean "racetrack?"

The Great Starlink Racetrack UFO Flap of 2022 | Skeptical Inquirer

When something new appears in the sky, people will often misunderstand or misidentify it. Reports of interesting new phenomena will cause people to look up ...

skepticalinquirer.org

 

[Avalon781ML]

I’ve seen similar lights over the Atlantic… always fun to hear the comments from various crews. More entertaining than the northern lights at this point.

 

[ahw01]

I’ve seen similar lights over the Atlantic… always fun to hear the comments from various crews. More entertaining than the northern lights at this point.

Sure it's not 7 clicks on the CTAF?

 

[thevideographer]

To be clear, the people seeing "racetrack" patterns are seeing continuous lights changing course while in view? Is this for an extended period of time or a second or two? How long does it take for a light to complete a racetrack?

 

[BobDDuck]

To be clear, the people seeing "racetrack" patterns are seeing continuous lights changing course while in view? Is this for an extended period of time or a second or two? How long does it take for a light to complete a racetrack?

Generally guys have been seeing the end turns of the racetrack (so about 180 degrees of turn plus some of the coming and going legs). The visible portion normally lasts 10 to 20 seconds. Tim3 beteeen leaving view and coming back into view (assuming it's thevsame object) is varisble but often more than a minute. Normally changing brightness levels with the peak brightness near the bottom of the curve. The pictures I posted where not capturing that movement, although there was some of that shortly before I took my camera out.

 

[roundout]

Y’all are looking out the windows?

 

[inigo88]

Here’s a replay from one that happened over the pacific with LA Center about 5 months ago.

There are a lot of others like this on YouTube from the last 6 months or so - Southwest in Memphis, and a curious Salt Lake Center controller who had been hearing these reports for days and was determined to crack the case.

If it is Starlink and the rotation is an optical illusion I’d be curious to know how it works (like multiple satellites on converging courses flaring and un-flaring at just the right times?). There are a couple of smartphone satellite tracking apps you can download, I think mine was like $5. Worth the money to rule out ET, plus it’s fun to get a better idea of what you’re looking at when you see a satellite streak by.

 

[ArcherII]

Here’s a replay from one that happened over the pacific with LA Center about 5 months ago.

There are a lot of others like this on YouTube from the last 6 months or so - Southwest in Memphis, and a curious Salt Lake Center controller who had been hearing these reports for days and was determined to crack the case.

If it is Starlink and the rotation is an optical illusion I’d be curious to know how it works (like multiple satellites on converging courses flaring and un-flaring at just the right times?). There are a couple of smartphone satellite tracking apps you can download, I think mine was like $5. Worth the money to rule out ET, plus it’s fun to get a better idea of what you’re looking at when you see a satellite streak by.

That pilot talked with Ryan Graves in his podcast Merged about this experience. He describes exactly the same thing as OP.

View: https://youtu.be/UjildVLwSHw

 

[BEEF SUPREME]

To be clear, the people seeing "racetrack" patterns are seeing continuous lights changing course while in view? Is this for an extended period of time or a second or two? How long does it take for a light to complete a racetrack?

I watched it for over 2 hours returning to the east coast from SEA. Starlink had always been described as a a chain of satellites. So while I was sure it was a human made thing. I wasn't sure it was Starlink or not.

I would describe it as a triangle pattern. The lights are varying luminosity getting brighter then dimmer until no longer visible. Moving up and right. Then across to the left. Then down and right. All the while changing from invisible to brighter than the background stars to invisible again. It didn't seem like an orbit to me so I thought it was something else in space or something maneuvering in space.

Looks like it's Starlink. I was hoping for something more exciting.

 

[inigo88]

I watched it for over 2 hours returning to the east coast from SEA. Starlink had always been described as a a chain of satellites. So while I was sure it was a human made thing. I wasn't sure it was Starlink or not.

I would describe it as a triangle pattern. The lights are varying luminosity getting brighter then dimmer until no longer visible. Moving up and right. Then across to the left. Then down and right. All the while changing from invisible to brighter than the background stars to invisible again. It didn't seem like an orbit to me so I thought it was something else in space or something maneuvering in space.

Looks like it's Starlink. I was hoping for something more exciting.

Sounds like the single row of closely spaced satellites was a Starlink soon after launch thing. But their ultimate goal is to build out the network similar to this shape:

That racetrack pattern is really intriguing because low earth orbit satellites travel in straight lines, so if you’re seeing a bright object in orbit turning a sharp corner… equals aliens?

But if you’re seeing a satellite tracing a triangle or diamond pattern but you’re only seeing the straight line segments and not seeing it turn the corner, you may actually be seeing multiple satellites in intersecting high inclination orbits crossing each other as shown above. But as a lifelong Star Trek fan I was rooting for it to be aliens.

 

[ppragman]

Sounds like the single row of closely spaced satellites was a Starlink soon after launch thing. But their ultimate goal is to build out the network similar to this shape:

View attachment 70761

That racetrack pattern is really intriguing because low earth orbit satellites travel in straight lines, so if you’re seeing a bright object in orbit turning a sharp corner… equals aliens?

But if you’re seeing a satellite tracing a triangle or diamond pattern but you’re only seeing the straight line segments and not seeing it turn the corner, you may actually be seeing multiple satellites in intersecting high inclination orbits crossing each other as shown above. But as a lifelong Star Trek fan I was rooting for it to be aliens.

The way to go would be to try to recreate this in KSP.

 

[mrivc211]

Here’s a replay from one that happened over the pacific with LA Center about 5 months ago.

There are a lot of others like this on YouTube from the last 6 months or so - Southwest in Memphis, and a curious Salt Lake Center controller who had been hearing these reports for days and was determined to crack the case.

If it is Starlink and the rotation is an optical illusion I’d be curious to know how it works (like multiple satellites on converging courses flaring and un-flaring at just the right times?). There are a couple of smartphone satellite tracking apps you can download, I think mine was like $5. Worth the money to rule out ET, plus it’s fun to get a better idea of what you’re looking at when you see a satellite streak by.

The consensus is 80% of what everyones seeing out there is ours. Anti-gravity/UAP craft. Rumor is we've been flying them around since the 1950's. 20% aren't ours.

 

[Richman]

There was that big incident in the late 70’s….

View: https://youtu.be/MLiRnvppAaM

 

[BEEF SUPREME]

Sounds like the single row of closely spaced satellites was a Starlink soon after launch thing. But their ultimate goal is to build out the network similar to this shape:

View attachment 70761

That racetrack pattern is really intriguing because low earth orbit satellites travel in straight lines, so if you’re seeing a bright object in orbit turning a sharp corner… equals aliens?

But if you’re seeing a satellite tracing a triangle or diamond pattern but you’re only seeing the straight line segments and not seeing it turn the corner, you may actually be seeing multiple satellites in intersecting high inclination orbits crossing each other as shown above. But as a lifelong Star Trek fan I was rooting for it to be aliens.

Secretly I'm rooting for aliens too. Although I was thinking if we humans had something that could fly around in orbit like an X-Wing that would be equally cool and a lot more plausible.

The strange thing about what I'm seeing is that I'm only seeing one of the "corners" in your above photo. Always from about 300 heading and 10-20 deg over the horizon. I've never seen them in other parts of the sky...