MonkeeSage
Senior Member.
Carl Andreasen (Carl Crusher) uploaded a video of the Evening Under The Stars event hosted by Chris and Ryan Bledsoe at Contact In The Desert 2026, where many claimed orbs are seen.
The event took place at Renaissance Esmeralda Resort, Indian Wells, CA on Sunday, May 31, 2026 at 9pm Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7).
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fsQgztTPqnqYVGyn8
13:43 - Start of the event
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFB8dlXZL84&t=823s
There are many objects being identified as orbs throughout the video and then one at the end that has a lot of Bledsoe fans worked up. All of them except the last one just look like satellites moving in straight lines, doing nothing unusual.
Chris does say several times throughout the video that people are welcome to check with a satellite app.
17:28
To his credit, he does admit one of the orbs actually is a satellite because Ryan appears to identify it using an app...but it looks exactly like all the other orbs.
18:05
So I wanted to look at another one from earlier in the video where he claims the orb is powering up because it's getting brighter.
15:24
The video has cut a few times by that point, so it has been longer than a minute and a half since the event started and it's not literally 9pm on the dot.
The star Spica is visible on the left and the constellation Corvus below the laser pointing at the orb at 15:35. This puts the viewing direction approximately due South for 9pm PDT.
17:09 - There's a pan from the building to the stage, showing the stage is to the left (East) of the building in the same spot @flarkey located it in the thread from last year's event (https://www.metabunk.org/threads/co...ng-under-the-stars-orange-orb-sighting.14270/).
So we have the location, viewing direction, and approximate time.
I tried checking some satellites in sitrec and there are a bunch that cross that path. I checked a bunch of them up through 9:34pm PDT by fast scrubbing in sitrec, but they all seemed too slow (I might just be bad at sitrec though!). For example, here's SL-32011 from 9:34pm.
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=12358/Bledsoe Contact In The Desert 2026/20260611_105050.js
There was a Tiangong/CSS pass around that time, but it was to the North, and there were no ISS passes visible.
CSS pass:
I will note that I couldn't see it getting brighter in the video, or changing course, though it did get dimmer at the end. I think that might be due to light pollution as it got lower on the horizon and bad night vision recording on Carl's phone.
Given the speeds don't match (if I did everything correctly) could it have been a plane that was too distant to see the navigation lights or something? I checked ADS-B exchange playback for a bit and checked some KMLs, and the planes flying West to East were relatively close and 30k feet and were too low on the horizon to pass between Spica and Corvus.
Then the finale of the event is a relatively larger white object that flies across the screen at 51:45.
Chris posted a video from a different camera on his Instagram where he insists it's an angel and not a bird.
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZPuKPWOoY1/
Mike Battista ("psionic asset" from Jake Barber's Skywatcher group) was there with Carl and says in an X post that it was a great horned owl. He says in a follow up post that he could tell because he zoomed in.
Carl and Mike are both supporters of Bledsoe, and believe they can summon their own orbs psychically, so for them to say it's a bird makes that seem even more plausible.
Ryan Bledsoe posted yet a different video of it on his Instagram. This is one I think looks most clearly like a bird flapping.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DZIUJuLDvBS/?img_index=2
A slightly off topic comment but I feel like it should be said. I was cringing so hard when they were shining laser pointers all over the sky the whole time. We saw last year that they mistook a plane for a orb, and if they had shined a laser pointer in a pilot's eyes this year it could have been a bad result. Chris somewhat flippantly shrugged it off at one point.
15:16
The event took place at Renaissance Esmeralda Resort, Indian Wells, CA on Sunday, May 31, 2026 at 9pm Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7).
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fsQgztTPqnqYVGyn8
13:43 - Start of the event
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFB8dlXZL84&t=823s
There are many objects being identified as orbs throughout the video and then one at the end that has a lot of Bledsoe fans worked up. All of them except the last one just look like satellites moving in straight lines, doing nothing unusual.
Chris does say several times throughout the video that people are welcome to check with a satellite app.
17:28
19:39External Quote:
External Quote:
To his credit, he does admit one of the orbs actually is a satellite because Ryan appears to identify it using an app...but it looks exactly like all the other orbs.
18:05
External Quote:
So I wanted to look at another one from earlier in the video where he claims the orb is powering up because it's getting brighter.
15:24
External Quote:
The video has cut a few times by that point, so it has been longer than a minute and a half since the event started and it's not literally 9pm on the dot.
The star Spica is visible on the left and the constellation Corvus below the laser pointing at the orb at 15:35. This puts the viewing direction approximately due South for 9pm PDT.
17:09 - There's a pan from the building to the stage, showing the stage is to the left (East) of the building in the same spot @flarkey located it in the thread from last year's event (https://www.metabunk.org/threads/co...ng-under-the-stars-orange-orb-sighting.14270/).
So we have the location, viewing direction, and approximate time.
I tried checking some satellites in sitrec and there are a bunch that cross that path. I checked a bunch of them up through 9:34pm PDT by fast scrubbing in sitrec, but they all seemed too slow (I might just be bad at sitrec though!). For example, here's SL-32011 from 9:34pm.
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=12358/Bledsoe Contact In The Desert 2026/20260611_105050.js
There was a Tiangong/CSS pass around that time, but it was to the North, and there were no ISS passes visible.
CSS pass:
I will note that I couldn't see it getting brighter in the video, or changing course, though it did get dimmer at the end. I think that might be due to light pollution as it got lower on the horizon and bad night vision recording on Carl's phone.
Given the speeds don't match (if I did everything correctly) could it have been a plane that was too distant to see the navigation lights or something? I checked ADS-B exchange playback for a bit and checked some KMLs, and the planes flying West to East were relatively close and 30k feet and were too low on the horizon to pass between Spica and Corvus.
Then the finale of the event is a relatively larger white object that flies across the screen at 51:45.
Chris posted a video from a different camera on his Instagram where he insists it's an angel and not a bird.
External Quote:
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZPuKPWOoY1/
Mike Battista ("psionic asset" from Jake Barber's Skywatcher group) was there with Carl and says in an X post that it was a great horned owl. He says in a follow up post that he could tell because he zoomed in.
Source: https://x.com/mbattista25/status/2064876213177352653External Quote:
Carl and Mike are both supporters of Bledsoe, and believe they can summon their own orbs psychically, so for them to say it's a bird makes that seem even more plausible.
Ryan Bledsoe posted yet a different video of it on his Instagram. This is one I think looks most clearly like a bird flapping.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DZIUJuLDvBS/?img_index=2
A slightly off topic comment but I feel like it should be said. I was cringing so hard when they were shining laser pointers all over the sky the whole time. We saw last year that they mistook a plane for a orb, and if they had shined a laser pointer in a pilot's eyes this year it could have been a bad result. Chris somewhat flippantly shrugged it off at one point.
15:16
External Quote:
