Odd aerial phenomenom

[SunhillJ]

On Sunday night (April 26th) around 9:20 pm Central Daylight Time in the Midwest US at about 43 North, my dad and I observed an odd aerial phenomenon. We're thinking they were Starlink satellites or similar, but I wanted to check on this.

We observed a series of lights moving across the sky from west to east. I can't give a precise point at which they appeared due to buildings, trees and clouds on the western horizon. However, I would say they tracked from the WSW to east across the sky. In addition, they disappeared at about due south from my point of view, maybe 45 degrees above the horizon.

There were multiple "clusters" of these lights. Per my dad, the first included five or six lights, this was followed by several individual lights and a final "cluster" of at least two dozen. All of these lights seemed to follow the same path in the sky and moved around 1/4 to 1/2 degree per second across the sky. I would estimate a magnitude between 2 and 4, but take that with a huge grain of salt as I'm horrible at this.

Like I said, I'm thinking these were Starlink satellites, but I can't confirm this. Would Starlink satellites behave in this fashion.

Thanks,

[tater]

That's almost certainly what you saw.

And welcome to the forum!

[RCgothic]

Yup, sounds about right! That'd be the most recent batch of 60 Starlinks as the others will have spread out to their operational separation and not be clustered. Congrats on your satellite spotting!

[Shpaget]

Starlink sats are launched in clusters of 60 satellites and they are released pretty much all at once, so they are clumped up until their maneuvering thrusters can spread them out. This can take quite a few days, and since the last launch was just 5 days ago, they are still very close to each other. Once they achieve their final orbit and proper arrangement, they will be much less noticeable.

Welcome!

[cubinator]

You saw Starlink, and if you had been out there at about 9:07 you would have seen a bunch more even more closely spaced, along the same path, followed by two loners, then the last group.

Here's a visualization showing where all those new sats are.

https://www.heavens-above.com/StarLink.aspx?launchid=2020006&lat=51.5074&lng=-0.1278&loc=London&alt=0&tz=GMT

They're closely packed like that because they just launched on Wednesday and are spreading out.