Light show between 40 and 30 West
 

Flying eastbound last night. My colleague decides to settle in for some controlled rest. So headset on and properly tune in to 123.45 and 121.50. Lots of excited chatter. Not unusual as it was “sporting” on the tracks last night.

But no it wasn’t the usual ride reports. Someone nattering on about the light show. And then many many more voices chirp in. The busiest I have ever heard 123.45. Something happening between the moon and Venus (later worked out not to be Venus. But a very bright fixed celestial object. Mars maybe?)

discussion of lights blinking. Then going left and right. A trio of them. Dancing around each other. Then disappearing for a few minutes. Then coming back. I thought meh. Satellites. But then I think most of my fellow aviators are pretty experienced. And suddenly bang. I saw them myself. It was absolutely surreal. I have never seen anything I can’t explain. It wasn’t satellites. It wasn’t the orionid meteor shower. It wasn’t spaceX’s starlink satellite train. About 10 aircraft from all nations could see it. And then when we hit about 25 west whatever it was was gone.

Chatting to some mates in other airlines, whatever this phenomenon is has been happening for several days. Always looking east.

No one in the air had a satisfactory explanation.
Again I have seen satellites, spacex starlink and meteors and it is none of the above. Many many pilots have seen whatever it is. I’m not saying it’s little green men, but it is definitely a unexplained (for now) flying objects.

Anyone have any ideas? Anyone seen them? Probably a little niche as it seems to be new and probably only visible from the flight deck.

Collective suggestibility? You were all listening in to the excited comments.

Were you perhaps looking too intensely at celestial objects in the dark, thus making them appear to move about?

I am not seeking to dismiss what you saw; I offer some explanations which are worth consideration. Most unusual sightings can be explained as mundane phenomena...which is not necessarily proof of mundanity!

Do the lights maintain any kind of formation? If so, do they do so whilst changing position? Do they change colour?

A few weeks ago we saw similar, but over the Balkans area. Numerous aircraft reporting the same thing to ATC, from northern Greece up to Croatia. On approach to SKG we had an extremely bright unusual fixed light in the sky (at night). Northbound we saw 3 lights moving as described, aircraft closer to it said they could see the objects above them moving in a manner aircraft aren't known to move, estimated at FL500. No idea what they were.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6b2f75644a.gif

It's a cook book!
 

"To serve Man " IIRC :)

It wasn't around the time of the Artemis launch?

Artemis did cross my mind. But whatever it was it was moving too fast across the field of view to be out of the upper atmosphere. And the mass hysteria angle did cross my mind as well. But it has been seen over many days by many different crews.

Many unexplained 'UFO' type phenomena will be the military of various nations exercising various pieces of kit (which of course they'll deny all knowledge of).

If we occam away the more exotic possibilities, it is most likely that as the above poster says, some form of space-mil tech being tested, or used. Maybe in a portion of the sky that apart from pilots in their darkened cocpits, no man would be there to see it (whatever). All those billions that seem to disappear in projects that don't stand up to scrutiny must be going somewhere and these sightings could well be the result.

I guess it's not the easiest thing to film on a phone with all the cockpit lighting and glass in the way but I wonder if anyone managed to get some video of the phenomena.

"They" seem to be at it again.
Well documented phenomena.
Did you get an idea of direction of movement, overall?

in my field of vision right to left. Then disappearing and then starting at the right again. Generally between the moon on the left and a star/planet same height as the moon on the left

military crossed my mind. But why do it in a place where hundreds of people in flight can see it.

why not do it in a bit of “space” where very few people can see it. South Pacific for example. As opposed to direct line of sight of the nat tracks.

I heard on 123.45 that crews were trying to video it but too dim to be picked up on camera phones.

as to the moderator that moved it from JB to R and N. Fair enough your train set. But can I claim my prize for being the first ever thread to go in this direction as opposed to the opposite way 😱

Thanks for the description. Out of curiosity, any long obvious North-south movements?

I suggest a report to a certain NGO that has the biggest record of reported events up to now, and no not muffon or whatever it is called.
Actually you will find many similar incidents in their records.

Maybe let the pilots discuss this "rumour" on the "Professional Pilots Rumour Network".

A Chinese rocket stage came apart in LEO a couple of days ago. Could it be debris from that?

Right to left then gone. Then another set right to left again and gone ?
Does right = south ?
Objects high enough to still be illuminated by the sun then as they track north into the earth's shadow ?
Something, well 2 groups of 3 of them, in low polar orbit ?

‘Back to Boeing’, that was a perfect description of what I and many other aircraft also saw in the mornings of the 11th and 16th Nov.
Initially, I put it down to the SpaceX starlink cubesats moving in varying orbits and catching the reflecting sun. But, as another pilot pointed out, they were not moving in a fixed orbital path….to add, I saw up to 4 moving lights at one time. They would be about as bright as the ISS at their brightest. Both nights they were in exactly the same part of the sky, above the eastern horizon, to the right of the bright star Arcturus. Which seems, is where you saw them too.

Fascinating.
I expected far more cynicism , nice to see the lack of it so far.
‘ Back to Boeing’ & ‘birdspeed’ , did you report it to your employers?
Is there a policy on any airline that makes it incumbent on you to do so , or would that leave you open to criticism?
What did the other people on the flight deck with you think of what you saw?

The narrator is a highly experienced F-14 RIO, ex CO of USN Academy Annapolis and ex editor of the USN "Approach" flight safety magazine.

Captain James Howard. BOAC

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=476030439840305

It's my long term favourite UFO story.

BTW. Jupiter is still very bright. Look at its moons (binoculars) now cos you're not going to be alive when it comes this close again.

Viewing objects, not 'just' lights, is a step further. They move unlike aircraft with which we are familiar...are there any manoeuvres which seem to be beyond any imaginabe Earthly technology? Infeasibly abrupt changes of speed and/or direction?

In a way, these sightings fit nicely with the US Navy 'chiclet' sightings. They involve aviation professionals who are likely to be received as credible witnesses.

If the lights are from classified military activity, the UFO/UAP misidentification will be welcome.

Erm- is the position given mid-Atlantic?

It would certainly would be interesting to know how long before local sunrise these observed events happened.

Observed the same lights last night. Starting around 35 west and finally losing the movement and the different intensity of light at 25 west.

I saw the same thing back to Boeing . Time stamp on the photos I took say 0056Z on 20/11/22 (photos are rubbish though!). We were on track Z at 39,000. Heard similar report on the radio, then started to see the lights at around 40W, they stopped around 30W. Phenomenon very similar to how you describe it. The purser thought we were losing the plot, so we asked someone on 12345 to explain what was happening!

I have no explanation either i'm afraid - Mr Optimistic 's seems the most plausible so far, but I have to say it looked very different to any other satellite ive seen whilst flying before.

​​​As John Marsh mentioned above, I did also think it was a groupthink scenario, and that my brain was matching what I was seeing to what we were hearing, but i'd like to think im quite cynical and rational, and therefore fairly sure it did happen as described!

It was mentioned on the radio that the best documented sighting of a similar event is covered in a video on US news - type "UAP racetrack" in youtube. This doesn't shed much light on matters, but is a similar account of what I saw.

Would love to hear if anyone sees it again. Heading east at 40W - look just above the horizon at midnight!

Hi, sightings like this have been reported all over the globe recently, particularly over the Atlantic, the Pacific and just last week over Brazil. We've been investigating the sightings on Metabunk.com and have determined that they are mostly starlink satellites flaring. But note, its not the usual 'train' of starlink that is often seen shortly after a launch, these are deployed Starlink satellites that are in low-earth orbit and are flaring near the day/night terminator.

Hopefully these videos will explain it. back to Boeing , birdspeed and CharlieUniform does this look like what you saw....? If you have any photos or videos of the lights (with location & time) then we can probably check if flaring Starlink Satellites were visible in that area of the sky at the time.




And here's links to two threads that show our rationale;
Why "Racetrack" UFOs are mostly Starlink Flares | Metabunk
Why are Starlink "Racetrack" Flares [Mostly] Reported from Planes? | Metabunk

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CharlieUniform (Post 11334373)

I saw the same thing

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​​​​CharlieUniform any chance you could post the photos and your metadata? Are you sure that the photo timestamp was ZULU/GMT and not EST/GMT-5?

Well, Mick West will deny the UAPs regardless.

Maybe The Edge , but in this case he and I have investigated and demonstrated our rationale as to what the UAP was. Feel free to comment upon our methods and conclusions on Metabunk.com.

Thanks for the invitation, will also ask Chris Letho to participate :)

Not sure if this has anything to do with the phenemenon discussed here, but a bright object was visible several times last week around 22:00-23:00 local time, from northeast Germany, direction SW (appr. 230 deg), at an elevation circa 40 degrees (estimated). The object did however not seem to move by any great extent. When viewed through a binocular, it appeared as an oval shape with sharp edges.

Thanks ‘Flarkey’,
So it seems these sightings are the Starlink satellites. We are seeing them well over the Eastern horizon, perhaps over 1000nm ahead of us. The large number of satellites, their concentration around 53N and mixed in with some some polar orbits are then being illuminated in a fairly small area of the sky by the winter sun. Causing an illusion that they are manoeuvring around each other.

Normally, in the winter we don’t see satellites so far from sunrise. It just so happens that these satellites are particularly reflective when low in the sky and just happen to be visually seen from so far away, long before dawn.

I guess we’ll get used to seeing them all time from now on.

And being well over the horizon from the surface, you won’t observe them from the ground. Only Airline pilots will be reporting them.

That is true for the brightest flares, but the recent UFO Flap in Porto Alegre in Brazil and the Jimmy Church video from Palmdale California shows that these can be seen from the ground. But pilots will definitely get the best view and are more likely to see them against the dark cloudless sky. And they're more likely to notice weird lights in the sky to ensure it isn't an airprox or collision risk.

On the one hand Ockham’s razor probably tells me it’s these flares. But something does niggle me. Starlink have been launching for years. I have been crossing the Atlantic for years. Including during the pandemic. Why are they only massively prevelaar now. As in the last few days.

‘Back to Boeing,’ 3 years ago they started launching 50 or so satellites at a time. Now there are a little less than 3000 in the 550km high orbit. So I guess we’ve now reached a time when the orbits are fairly full, so there is a constant stream of potentially visible satellites especially at 53N/S.

Also, I’ve seen somewhere that these satellites have flat bottoms so may reflect light better at shallow angles. This means that we can see them far over the horizon during the winter and not the summer as the angles don’t work to be seen. So this winter is probably the first time that it’s become so noticeable.

The polar orbital sats have been a recent addition too, adding to the display.

Could be BlueWalker 3, a new huge comms satellite that was unfolded last week.

BlueWalker 3

BlueWalker 3 Sightings

I think it's a hallucination caused by long-term exposure to chemtrails toxins...

Thanks for the links Flarkey . Apologies, you’re right. It’s EST, so 0556z. Location data on the photo only shows departure airport, but FR24 track log shows our location at that time as:

05:57AM 44.97 -36.01 → 74° 598kts 11887m

Thanks again for the explanation (although I was secretly hoping it involved little green men!)

CharlieUniform Thanks for the correction. I quickly punched in your lat long and time details into in-the-sky.com and it shows that there were a bunch of satellites towards the NE at the time of your 'sighting'. The red ones in the image below are illuminated by the sun, which is directly below the horizon on your 74° heading. These are the conditions in which we understand that the Starlink flares will be observed.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....56673e7870.jpg

John Marsh wrote Most definitely not! I have been flying the atlantic for 34 years and have never seen anything unusual. However on 17th Nov 2022 I was eastbound and between 40 West and 30 West I saw things I have never seen before.

There were a couple of objects moving which were clearly not aircraft and may well have been satellites. Not very unusual. However then there was a bright light similar to Venus (but not Venus which I have seen hundreds of times) but more like an aircraft head on with its landing lights on, except it suddenly went sideways at great speed for 10 seconds but then reversed its direction.

That disappeared but a few minutes later there was another not so well lit object with another similar one visible. These two then moved very fast in the same direction but not in sufficient formation to be a reflection and then one reversed direction and then after a pause the other changed its direction and followed slowly catching it up.

About this time an American accented voice on 123.45 said "Is anyone else seeing some very strange lights in the sky around 40 West?" Several other voices joined the conversation and there was then a discussion and someone suggested Elon Musk's Starling satellites. However everyone agreed they could not have changed direction like that.

Saw the same thing over Central Europe last week. Initially thought Starlink but the terminator was way too far west by then to catch them in LEO so something else. Other unusual thing was whatever was generating / reflecting the light had it’s back to the direction of the sun at the time of maximum intensity. I’ve not even seen the ISS or Venus that bright before.