Originally Posted by
ManuelK
I found that just one year ago three dancing lights were sighted over the North atlantic. We saw them just two days ago again. We just passed N4500/W4530, east-bound, FL400. We were three pilots on the flight deck. I can assure that we did neither see sattelites nor some star formation. We could observe them for some 10 minutes.The objects moved in trajectories unlike the ones normaly done by planes. Impressive and strange at the same time!
Anybody with an explanaition?
Hey
ManuelK - The usual explanation is flaring starlink satellites, that is where the sun glints off the chassis of the satellite from over the horizon. Pilots have been seeing lights likeyou describe for over a year now and on many occasions they, like you, said that they were definitely not satellites. However, on closer investigation , it was shown that flaring starlink satellites would have been visible in the same part of the sky at the same time as their sighting. Some of them accepted starlink flares as an explanation , some didnt. I've seen starlink flares multiple times from the ground and they do look very weird, I'd even say that they dont look like traditional satellites do, and they do appear to move in strange trajectories. This video explains what the starlink flares are.
You said that you were "passed N4500/W4530, east-bound, FL400" - Did you get any video or photos? if you post what date & time your sighting was I can check if starlink flare would have been visible at that moment. (happy to keep this to DMs if you dont want that published). We now understand what the conditions are for the flares to occur, and there's even a starlink flare simulator application:
Sitrec nightsky (metabunk.org)
F.