Interesting sighting from my infrared scope

[solar_flare]

Hello, first time poster. I captured something interesting on my thermal scope, im wondering what you all think it could be?

Context:
I was outside my house sky scanning at ~1:45 AM
The footage is handheld and quite shaky
My focal distance is set on the moon which was clear and bright.
I did not adjust digital zoom other than the brief PIP that you see in the video.
I tried to keep the scope level and did not rotate the scope.
The blurry shapes you see on the bottom right occasionally is a very out of focus large spruce tree.

What I saw:
Interesting footage happens 26 seconds into the raw video.
Two lights that seem locked together but change in distance and seeming rotation.
A dim light shows up at 1:08 (bottom right) and seems to lock into the 2 light formation creating a triangle for a few seconds. (best seen in stabilized version)
The two lights seem to speed away to the left at 1:17.

Scope: TGS650 from brand TRV (3x base optical zoom)
Date: Oct 20th 2026 ~1:45AM (please note the date setting on my scope resets to 2025 when i change the battery so the time is an estimate)
Location: Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Direction: South East

20250112_095404.mp4 is the full raw file (please note the date setting on my scope resets to 2025 when i change the battery)
2obstab.mp4 is my attempt at stabilization.

Im really interested in what you all think!

 

[Ann K]

Two lights that seem locked together but change in distance and seeming rotation.

The two lights (sometimes four) give the distinct impression of being an artifact, perhaps an internal reflection, but I'm sure there are people here who are more familiar with your particular equipment.

 

[NorCal Dave]

The two lights (sometimes four) give the distinct impression of being an artifact, perhaps an internal reflection, but I'm sure there are people here who are more familiar with your particular equipment.

I'm as knowledgeable about the internal workings of various cameras as you, but I tend to agree. If one goes to around 0:45 of the video and slows the playback speed down, the 2 lights clearly mimic each other and are linked.

 

[jon_eir]

The two lights (sometimes four) give the distinct impression of being an artifact

the poster has zoomed on the 2 lights and shown them picture in picture I believe.

I checked these- there is no metadata, with the poor quality and zoom levels and lack of gps location makes identification etc unlikely imo

 

[Mendel]

I wonder if image processing could reveal some stars in the background. (Provided the dots aren't stars.)

Ideally we'd want to analyse the motion of the camera vs. the motion of the dots.

They have motion blur, so I'd say they're caused by light entering the lens.

The interesting non-technical question would be whether the effect can be reproduced in the same place at the same time on a different night.

 

[jon_eir]

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/TRV-TGS650-Thermal-Imaging-Scope-640_1601299138798.html

this appears to be a thermal imaging scope used for hunting,with wifi video capturing ability.
given the poster states

My focal distance is set on the moon

meaning that the poster adjusted the scope's focus until the Moon appeared sharp and clearly defined in the thermal image. 3× optical magnification for this scope. The scope was focused on a very distant object. Because the Moon is approximately 384,400 km from Earth, focusing on it effectively sets the scope's focus to infinity. Other distant objects should also appear relatively sharp but what that means for the bright dots I couldn't say, they may be stars relativity in focus, starlink etc less in focus, planes, birds, bugs and so on.

I did not adjust digital zoom other than the brief PIP that you see in the video.

this means briefly activating the Picture-in-Picture (PIP) feature on this scope.

We cant see the moon and dont have accurate gsp, Azimuth etc without having 3 stationary objects I think it high unlikely that if they could be identified as stars. A user with greater star map/identification experience will be able to confirm this.

As its thermal imagery and we dont know how much the poster was moving around which could affect apparent movement and relative distance to this object.

The blurry shapes you see on the bottom right occasionally is a very out of focus large spruce tree.

They appear to come into and out of shot so some movement occurred.
I just dont see how any confirmed identity can be ascertained at this stage.

Based purely on the balance of probabilities and lack of further info at this stage, I posit some relatively close object like a bird/bat for the 3rd object which showed the largest amount of movement. Possible stars for the other 2 objects but they showed a large amount of apparent convergence so I would start with starlink link like objects and start working back to closer objects.