Date: Jan 26, 2024Time: 18:30 local time (17:30GMT)Location: approx Lat 52.30 / Lon 5.04Direction: facing East
This isn’t quite as exciting as a lot of the footage that appears here, but it was mysterious enough that I thought I should post it to see if someone can identify them.
On the evening of Jan 25, I was looking at the sky while taking a short evening walk. I noticed what appeared to be a satellite moving slowly through the sky. Suddenly, the solid light started flashing rhythmically – going off/on/off/on as it flew across the sky. And then, as I got my phone out to start filming, it suddenly went dark.
I thought at the time that it might have been caused by high-altitude otherwise-invisible bands of cloud which were obscuring the light at intervals as it moved. Didn’t think much of it, just thought it was curious.
The next night, Jan 26, I went out for another walk around 18:25. Thinking of what happened the previous night, I glanced up at the sky – which that night was amazingly clear. I was VERY surprised to see the same exact thing!
This time I got my phone out almost immediately. Instead of one, there were two satellite-like objects which began flashing rhythmically in the sky while moving. The first is visible in the center of the video, moving from upper left to lower right – it approaches a star, and then goes dark. The second one follows a similar path, from upper left to lower right – and rhythmically goes on and off – until it suddenly flashes a bit brighter (also a bit faster than the preceding rhythmic flashing) and disappears. Another “normal” satellite is visible in the same video, crossing from right to left. Video here:
Jan 26, 2024 – 6:30pm – flashing lights which disappear.
There were also normal airplanes visible in the sky – I filmed one 4 minutes later, just to document that the flashing lights I had filmed earlier did NOT look like the flashing lights of commercial airplanes (2nd video is below):
Jan 26, 2024 – 6:34pm – commercial airplanes
Does anyone have any idea what these might have been? High-altitude aircraft with directional flashing lights? Rotating reflective objects in space? It just was strange to see solid moving lights which then started flashing, then disappeared. What would cause this?
I don’t think it was atmospheric interference for a few reasons. First, it’s hard to see in this video – but the sky was really crystal clear that night. We are next to a large city, and despite severe light pollution the stars were clearly visible across the sky. Second, another satellite clearly crosses an area where the two flashing lights were dark just a few seconds earlier – and remains clearly visible while traversing this zone.
Both videos were filmed with an iPhone 12 Pro.
Thanks for taking a look!
submitted by /u/kojef
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