I hope that you find one Eric. Would love to see it from a trusted source.
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I’ve got a friend on it. When I get home and on a proper laptop I’ll post it properly.
Haven’t heard from the friend yet. This is the raw video. Somehow though, it is darker than when played directly from my Photos app. What the video doesn’t show is the multitudinous starfield that the lights overpower and my old iphone can’t capture. Instead you just see the lights. Also missing is other the air traffic that was visible but not captured. Best watched in a dark environment with brightness turned uncomfortably high. Zooming in to the center by 2x or more is helpful. Scrubbing will help discern movement and trajectory. Finally, because all the other elements that were visible with the naked eye are missing in the video, the viewer doesn’t get the sense (or illusion) of altitude and distance. These lights “feel” as if they are 100s of miles away. The video is decidedly underwhelming. Cliche but true: you had to be there.
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Anyone else getting a video error?
No Joy here
Initially yes. But right click and ‘open video in new tab’ worked for me (Firefox)
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that worked for me too. interesting to see those little lights.
Initially I thought the brightening and dimming might have been due to the differing ‘thickness’ of the cloud layers because of the relative motion of your aircraft.
But the the way that they moved at about the 2min 30sec mark… I’m stumped?
I would really love to see some clearer video.
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I’ve seen lights like those as well.
Looks like landing lights orbiting in a pattern, but at high altitude and who knows how far away.
I’ve heard the Starlink explanation but I’m not sure I buy it.
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Thanks for posting Eric! When I first saw them, they reminded me of planes lining up for landing at really busy airport, like Hartsfield. But then I saw your altimeter and the angle out of your window that you were looking at them, and my theory no longer made sense.
But, I think that the Starlink satellite network is a plausible explanation though. They’ve put up over 7000 of them. What time of day was the video taken?
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The video was taken at 0455z from F390 off the SW coast of Ireland. Here is why I doubt Starlink:
Starlink
I see Starlink very often. So often now that a sighting no longer warrents a comment in the flight deck. They are tiny and dim. The sun has set behind me 30min to 1:00 before. They often appear as a chain, each “bead” becoming visible when the angle is right and disappearing when it flies into Earth’s shadow. They travel in a straight line and at constant velocity.
These lights
I only see them—towards/in vicinity of—Scotland. They sun is well below the horizon and opposite me and the lights. I only see them between the months of December and February (I think). They are much brighter than any other satellite—roughly about two to ten times the apparent brightness of Venus. These lights often (but not in the video) appear to change velocity and trajectory. I once observed one light fly a corkscrew pattern relative to the other. They tend to appear as a triangle or trapezoid of 3 or 4 lights, no one light EVER traveling on the same vector as any other. Landing lights are not generally on above F200 but when they are, they are quite dim past 30 miles or so. These lights are (I “feel”) 100s of miles away, judged by how they do not change as I fly toward them at 500 knots for 10-30 minutes with no apparent change in angle, brightness or scale.
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Sounds like maybe these could be geostationary satellites? I’m not sure if they corkscrew around one another, but it is physically possible if they are in stationary orbits. They could be reflecting the sun that is almost on the opposite side of the earth, as geostationary orbit is much, much higher than the low earth orbit starlink net.
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Geostationary satellites are impossible to see.
They are FAR away.
Edit: I meant to say: so far that even when they reflect they are too small and not bright enough.
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22,236 miles
I probably sounded like I was discounting your pragmatic analysis. I didn’t mean to. You’ve undoubtedly had plenty of time to contemplate what you’ve seen and discuss those ideas with other professional pilots, who’ve had similar experiences. And if not your group, who’ve spent much of a lifetime observing lights in the sky from the surface to to high altitude, then who? You’re a captured, mostly pragmatic and analytical audience with a front row seat.
The only reason that I mention Starlink is due to the shear numbers of them in seemingly random low earth orbit. They don’t remain in the most often observed bead, but disperse into different orbits, as seen when you zoom into the tracking map, which also maps ground based relay stations.
That wouldn’t explain why you only see them over Scotland, but maybe there is an atmospheric reason. The timing and perhaps the heading might work. Near sunrise and even though on a 127 heading, looking what appears northeast out your left window.
Anyway, just random conjecture from a mostly terrestrial observer. The video is positively fascinating and most worthy of discussion. Thanks again for sharing with our group.
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I saw something similar a few months ago while on a flight from Austin to San Diego. Lights fading in and out, sometimes bright, sometimes dim. I figured it was probably something going on in the NTTR such as an in flight refueling exercise.
Here is a map showing the designated refueling areas in the UK…
Maybe a possibility?
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I had a chat with a friend this morning, who retired a general in the USAF Reserve (C-17), and currently an airline captain. Our daughters are playing on the same club lacrosse team, and we naturally gravitated to one another, since we look more like grandparents than the old dads we are.
I asked him if he was still flying to Europe and if he had seen unusual lights in the sky. His response was that it was funny I should mention it, because he recently had. In his words, “I’m seeing something that I’ve never seen in 34 years of flying.” He didn’t have time to chat more about the subject, because the game was beginning. Will ask him next week if I see him.
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So to add fuel to the fire…and trust me…I don’t believe in “aliens” visiting (I believe there is other life out there…but the time and space of space makes it highly improbable we would run into them…) …but I do believe in “UFOs” by their definition “Unidentified Flying Objects”. Heck… I AM a UFO sometimes I suppose.
Anyway…maybe 6 or 8 months ago I was flying with a guy…and he was telling me about seeing some lights similar to what @smokinhole described. I heard the story…then happened to be flying with him again a few weeks later. I wish I knew the exact time…but it had to be something like 3 or 4 or 5 in the morning…we are headed northbound…somewhere maybe in Pennsylvania. And we are at probably the low FL300s and he points out some lights on the north horizon. I don’t know angles and stuff…but if you stuck your hand in front of your face you might say it was a hand width above the horizon (10 degrees?). There were three lights…only sometimes would all three be visible…and they DID look like they were making random up and down movements. They looked FAR away…like I thought for sure they must be hundreds of miles away. And they weren’t moving like a satellite does (seen hundreds of those). They were single point, white lights…so nothing exotic. I kept trying to figure out if I was experiencing a somatogravic illusion…and I’m still not completely convinced that I wasn’t…but they did appear to be moving. The lights were fading in and out at a rate that didn’t seem to be consistent with a refueling pattern…nor did they seem to be regularly enough to be that of a tumbling satellite.
My first thought was…yeah…got to be geostationary…maybe polar “parked” satellites or something? Definitely not StarLink…seen those a dozen times too. It felt like it was above the atmosphere…but not really in orbit.
They were the same lights that my partner saw…and what makes is suspicious is that they do appear in the same slice of sky…so it does make me think it is something way out in space or something (orbital). I don’t know much about reflected light and whether you could see something bounce off something geo-stationary…but it still doesn’t explain the perceived movement.
I don’t know. I just chalked it up to one of those weird things that I don’t have any idea about…but also don’t think it is anything fantastical for some reason. I guess because it wasn’t fantastical enough. 
I mean…if something came up beside me and flew along and did some zany stuff…I’m sure it would register. This just looked…plain…and odd…but I feel there is an explanation that I just can’t come up with.
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If it isn’t toward the south (or the north if we are Australian or so) then we can rule out the geostationary satellites anyway. They are always over the equator, they don’t have apparent movement (or at least one that you could see without a good telescope) and they are far too dim to see with the naked eye.
However: I thought about moving up/down: maybe satellites in a Molniya orbit could create that kind of motion? IIRC they would look like they are moving up and down (they have highly elliptical orbits).
They are used for communications in high latitudes where geostationary satellites cannot be reached.
They are synchronized to the Earth’s rotation.
What makes me think that this is probably not it: the point where they “turn around” is also pretty far away. Like in 30000km away. It is very unlikely - most likely impossible - that they are visible to the naked eye.
However… what about a Tundra orbit? Also high inclination, also a “loop” in the ground path, also geosynchronous. They stay in almost the same spot for a while.
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By definition geostationary satellites don’t move. 
Only by comparing their relative motion to the stars (which will rotate with the earth while the satellite will stay fixed in the sky) should you see them move.
Now I can’t say if you could see one with the naked eye or not, but my guess is it’s far more likely to see them near zenith than the horizon where air is denser and stars generally are harder to make out.
That said, there are maneuvering satellites in LEO. China has been experimenting with them, and the US if not other Western countries have had the capability for a long time now. They also have their own space station and capsules and on top of that space is getting REALLY crowded lately.
Although they appear to be really far away, I don’t think they are satellites. Given the distance, even if LEO, the velocity and acceleration for those ‘lights’ is off the charts.
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