Comment by streb-lo
1 year ago
Just throwing this out there, but has anyone else seen 'formations' of satellites? I've only seen them once but there were about 5 to 10 (it was a while ago) of what I'm assuming are satellites moving in a line formation at high speeds across the night sky. They're too distant and too fast to be planes so I'm assuming they are some sort of military formation of satellites?
That's often a recently launched StarLink formation -- the bunch up in a line when deployed, and have to be maneuvered over several weeks to spread out and take different orbits.
> They're too distant
I don’t know how you would know that. People are very bad at seeing distances at these scales.
If they were indeed satelites they could be starlink satelites. They are put into orbit as a bunch together and then they spread along their orbital path as they take up their position.
This article has a picture, maybe you can check if it is similar to what you have seen? https://earthsky.org/space/spacex-starlink-satellites-explai...
If you could recall more details then maybe we can figure out more exactly what this might have been. (Such as where you were, which direction you were looking at, when did this happen, how fast did they cross the sky and how far the dots were from each other. Were the line spread in the direction they were moving or sideways?)
I saw ISS in formation with visiting spacecraft a couple times - once with Space Shuttle back in the day and at least once with Dragon. Looks pretty interesting. :)