Probably a thread on this already. Couldn’t locate it though. Been doing a lot of night time transcons and some waters stuff the last year. In the 15 years prior, I can honestly say I’d never seen anything, way up above, that was hard to explain. Really just boring. Not so much the case lately though.

First I’d like to say that I’m well aware of Starlink and have seen the trains of satellites a few times. Mainly from the ground when they recently launched. I understand there’s almost 4k of these special communication satellites around the world at any given time.

What myself and many others are seeing every so often, bears some resemblance to satellites however, the motion and trajectory of what is seen, makes me scratch my head. Kidding about the alien thing but whatever technology is being used up there, is not common understanding amongst the human race. Of course that’s not saying much about us humans.

Last night, for about 2 hours in cruise, we watched these lights get bright and dim, going all different directions and even clearly changing direction and velocity. Probably about 10 other aircraft were commenting about it at the same time. The brightness was hard to ignore. In about 20 minutes I counted about 35 different objects going all different directions.

Spent a lot time as a kid, mesmerized by finding satellites in the sky. This is different though. Any one else seen them?

 

There are sky gazing apps that you can put on your iPad. A lot of them will also give ephemeris data on satellites, and will show their position in the sky.

 

There are some new satellites which alter their attitude, or the alignment of their solar arrays, on a regular basis. This can make them seem to appear and disappear at random times as they arrays catch the sunlight. This also happens when satellites cross the terminator and fall into or out of the sun's direct light.