This is a subject where everything and everyone should be pushed and questioned. No one one who is not an authority on high altitude or orbital flight should be a trusted observer. As I am neither of those things, I appreciate not being trusted on this. (I know that’s not where you are coming from @chipwich).
I did not know that Starlink need not present itself as a “line of beads”. So see? I’ve been running on a conjecture that is no longer true. What I proposed at the top of this thread 2 years ago was than maybe we were seeing a form of animation. As the satellites rotated they reflected light in such away that they gave the illusion of single objects flying when it is really hundreds of different objects flashing in a discernible sequence. That too would be incredible! But then we have the issue of 1) Why (apparent) Scotland? and 2) How so bright? (Did I mention how bloody bright these things are?). Back to Scotland. Maybe this could be explained by time of morning. That might also explain the Wintertime-only presence of the phenomenon. But wait! That makes no sense either. The sun is always at that angle relative to the horizon SOMEWHERE. Always. Any observer at 50N or 50S looking East when the sun is 1 1/2 hours below the horizon should experience this. Why are they not? OR Are they not? A case for Starlink is the time and date. I first learned of these lights in December 2022. That’s within a year or two of Starlink beginning to really populate LEO.
I was also thinking that it could be debris, for example from a rocket that launched into a polar orbit.
Might be an upper stage of a Falcon 9 doing a correction burn or debris of a Russian one (for example launched from Plesetsk).
Just as an example: The day @smokinhole 's video was shot there was a launch of a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, carrying something for the NRO into a high inclination orbit (toward the south, but the way orbits work means that it comes north on the other side).
An hour later in a low orbit would mean two thirds around the earth (around 90 minutes is typical for an orbit between 200km and 600km if it is circular).
A Falcon 9 circularization burn typically happens after around 50 minutes.
After that we don’t exactly know what the rockets do. They release their payload at some point (for NRO launches we don’t know when and where) and then they move themselves out of the way a few minutes later by doing another burn that puts them in their final, usually lower orbit that makes them reentry over the pacific a few weeks later due to orbital degradation.
The launch was at 0353UTC and the video was taken an hour later.
So if that rocket launched with a ~60 degrees inclination that would put the upper stage (and/or it’s payload which might maneuver or not) over the UK an hour later.
THAT sounds like the answer! I happen to be staying with my NASA engineer brother (retired). As he gets older, everything is political. So I didn’t share the video with him thinking it would just start an uncomfortable conversation. But now that I have a plausible explanation that I can run by him, it makes sharing possible. I’ll report back.
Not to whip a dead horse, but I keep coming back to Starlink as the source due to the shear number of them in LEO. As far as the brightness, they use solar arrays, so in the thinner atmosphere of FL 390, couldn’t the sun’s light be reflected over hundreds of miles? Gosh, we really need an astrophysicist among us
@smokinhole if you encounter the lights on your next trip, if you have Internet connectivity, the time, and the inclination, perhaps you could pull up the live Starlink map on your tablet and see if there are sats traveling on their approximate bearing. I see these two passing over Scotland now, but I’m assuming what you were viewing might have been further west, especially due to the time and low viewing angle. Maybe someone here is capable of calculating how far away an object would need to be in order to appear co-altitude in the upper FLs if it is orbiting at 550 kms.
Ran it by brother Tommy. He is a 2nd generation NASA mechanical engineer. Despite his NASA chops he will freely admit that he knows very little about orbital mechanics. He does, unlike me, believe that aliens are a possible explanation for weird phenomenon seen for generations. In the case of my videos, he buys @Aginor’s theory of falling 1st or 2nd stage debris.
@chipwich, will do! Although I really do doubt Star-link directly, but maybe the launch vehicle carrying them aloft. The lights are several times brighter than Venus. I just don’t think a small solar array would appear so bright. But who knows. Anyway, certain as ever it’s not LGMs or China’s latest tech.
That blew my mind too. I actually checked out a book (back when libraries were a thing) on orbital mechanics because I was fascinated by spaceflight. I guess…uh…my very broad degree is “Aerospace Studies”…LOL…just meant I liked to read. I think orbital rendezvous is what really made me interested in some of it.
Not so much smart, just fortunate that the lights were in close proximity to where Venus was in the sky. Is that pretty much like you saw the lights over Scotland Eric?
Do you exclude the possibility of reflections in the windscreen?
Sometimes I see lights move in strange ways and mostly upwards, only to realize that it was lights below us, reflecting in the angled and curved window. If that would’ve been the case with your sightings, I guess they would’ve been rigs and boats…?
Pretty much! Watched ‘em again last night. This time though they were between Iceland and Scotland. FO asked “What are those things?” I said (exaggerating) “Nobody knows. Nobody cares.” He said, “Probably Starlink.” I said, “Well, it’s 4 in the morning in Iceland. If that is reflected sunlight then maybe the Earth really IS flat!”
That’s a fascinating video. I played it in the big screen in our family room this morning. I think that the small objects passing behind it during the video, which are coming in and out of view from all angles as interesting as the bright object in the middle. I hadn’t noticed them watching the video on my phone.
Paul, you’ve certainly spent more time looking at and capturing images of objects in space than most of us. When I zoom in as much as possible to my untrained eyes, it looks like something orbit, similar to the latest Tiangong space station. But that just a wild ass guess. Do you have any thoughts that you’d care to share.
So, Venus looks distorted because it was the brightest object, was being viewed through a thick windshield and I was holding the camera as we cruised along. So lots of things to add distortion and shake when you zoom in on it. The ‘lights’ were not as bright, and didn’t seem to show the distortions as much, but that could also be a result of the focus, which most likely wasn’t spot on. The relative positions of the lights and their motion, in relation to Venus shows up quite well though.
YES! Same here. I mean, sure I got it but didn’t really, um, experience it - appreciate it - until KSP v1.
