I'm praying what I saw was a SpaceX launch. If not, I want to be the first to welcome our alien overlords.

The event was a first for me -- it was like a ballet. I was watching the night sky, minding my own business, say, about 20:30, when two bright stars moved across the sky from west to east -- but they couldn't be stars. They moved in tight arcs across the sky -- was rocket power making them move in non-ballistic trajectories?

Later (wasn't timing -- 15 minutes?), a train of ten-ish or so objects spanning perhaps 10 degrees, shrouded in a glowing haze, fly overhead in a straight line, moving west to east. Later still (wasn't timing because I wasn't expecting even more weirdness this evening -- another 15 minutes?) ten-ish bright stars in a train each spaced, say, 5 degrees apart, move across the sky from northwest to southeast.

What did I see?

On 2023-09-16 10:30 PM, yeldahtron wrote:

I'm praying what I saw was a SpaceX launch. If not, I want to be the first to welcome our alien overlords.

Definitely a StarLink train, dispersing to their individual orbits now it seems.

We had a grand view of them all in tight formation Friday night
at the Diefenbunker Star Party.

Cheers
--
Mark Lord

Starlink Group 6-16 Falcon 9 Block 5

开云体育

About 30 of us were at Fall'n'Stars star party in Prince Edward County over the weekend.? We have a couple of people who keep us on track for seeing all the ISS passes so we were all watching this great pass, right from horizon to horizon through the zenith.? Imagine our surprise when a fainter satellite came screaming up behind the ISS on a parallel path, passed the ISS right near the zenith and continued out of sight.? This fainter satellite was apparently tumbling as it repeatedly faded to invisibility with a regularity, something like every 5s?? I suggested that it might be a resupply mission and indeed there was a Soyuz taking 3 new crew up.? But later details show that it was already docked late Friday afternoon.? So none of us has yet figured out what it was and if it was related to the ISS.? Huge excitement though.

Two of us watched part of the ISS pass through the 24", one of us would point the scope using the Telrad until the other got it in the eyepiece then, after a short period switch places.? Lots of detail in the solar panels etc.

All this was followed by the two Starlink satellite trains coming up from the NW horizon exactly as you describe. Much as we hate satellite constellations it is amazingly stirring to see a train of dozens of bright satellites slowly creeping across the sky like a night train across a British landscape.

Rick