Gillette, WY "three rotating lights" (Cowboy State Daily, Nov 2026): not rotating, not a searchlight

SkyAugur

Member
Cowboy State Daily ran this on Nov 5: a Gillette video of three lights that look like a rotating triangle. Their UFO investigator couldn't explain it.
Article: https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/1...-womans-new-footage-of-three-rotating-lights/
Filmed 10:24 pm, Sep 25 (per the video description):


I tracked each light frame by frame. Nothing rotates.
Three frames, about 2 seconds apart. The red and purple lights move together; the yellow one slides past them in a straight line. The lights fade in and out, so an empty circle means that light is too faint to see in that frame.
gillette_three_frames.png


Not a searchlight on clouds: Gillette airport reported clear sky below 12,000 ft that night, the lights are sharp points, and there are no beams. Not stars or planets, since they drift against a utility pole. Probably not lanterns either: steady white, no flicker, and they drift different ways instead of north on that night's south wind.

Best guess for the pair is small drones, but I can't prove it yet. The crossing light moves like a plane, but nothing on ADS-B that night matches it.

EDIT: Most likely Starlink, per Ravi, RobertBillyBob and Mick West (#2–4). My drone guess was wrong; I'd assumed no zoom and didn't account for flares. Thanks guys!
 
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Perhaps the good old Starlink? It might be a bit too bright though (compared to the foreground). But I also know todays phones are great. Ps, the article is one of those typical "we know what we saw" ones.
 
The use of "rotating" is interestingly reminiscent of the old "racetrack ufos" back when starlink flares first caught our attention, if you interpret "rotating" as "going around in circles."
 
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