Barbareno89
By Brandyn
Last night (08/17/2023), around 9:15pm I was in my backyard in East Ventura letting my dog out to pee before bed. I looked up in the sky and noticed a line of 2-3 dozen low-altitude shining objects in a line.
My first thought was that it was a drone show. but the object continued on a linear path increasing in altitude until they disappeared into the distance. I was able to get my mom and dad to look at it with me and we were completely stumped. They seemed to be originating from the Vandenberg area, and I then thought that they might have been a scheduled launch. However, it seems that any announced launches were postponed initially to after 12am on Friday (08/18/2023), and now I see that they were postponed again until Monday (08/21/2023).
My mom had her phone on her and she took the attached picture. I’ve also included zoomed-in shots from that picture – (2) attempting to see the objects more clearly (they seem cylindrical and stretched due to their velocity), and (1) wider view which shows how they were fading into the distance.
Do you or your team have any idea what they might be or be interested in investigating further? I don’t believe them to be in-orbit satellites as their altitude was clearly changing from lower to higher, but perhaps they were a series of missiles fired?
This was addressed in another comment thread.
Again, this was a train of 22 Starlink satellites launched on Wednesday from Canaveral. They appeared to be gaining altitude from your point of view as they moved from west to east, but they were at an essentially constant height above the Earth’s surface, on the order of 100 miles. They gradually move apart and move into higher orbits over a period of days.
You see them because the Sun is shining on them at that altitude, and they disappear one by one as they enter the Earth’s shadow. You will only see them within about two hours of sunset or sunrise, even though they orbit the Earth in about 90 minutes in their initial orbits.
Here’s a link for, “Find Starlink” site that will show visible times by selected location.
https://findstarlink.com/
Which shows that they will be coming by again tonight, starting at 8:37 PM, from NW to E, but now fairly dim at magnitude 2.6.
Starlink satellites for sat internet
Oops! That’s tomorrow night, the 19th.
They’re calling for mostly cloudy at view time on the 19th. Got my fingers crossed.
We saw the string again Friday evening from the Westmont Observatory public telescope night, low in the northeast, so the predictions for visibility aren’t perfected yet. It might be because of the new, larger Starlink satellites in the latest launches.
Soon this will be a common sight. Unfortunately.
Really interesting! Thanks Brandyn for posting this, and all you folks who knew the answers! All news to me.
Starlink. Been going on for years…that’s a good sighting though. They usually are not that bright.
Here’s another excellent website for tracking satellites, ISS, Hubble, Starlink and more. Check it out – https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/
As of this posting there is a high altitude balloon heading toward the airport from the southwest @50K feet. Quite easy to spot.