Moving Lights in Peru

[TurtleSnap]

Hello, I was in Ica, Peru two nights ago.

I looked up and saw what appeared to be a plane, as it was moving in one direction at first. But then I noticed it moving erratically. Up-down, side to side, doing circles. I was not able to capture the movement on my camera unfortunately, I started recording after it reached its destination, as I thought it was a plane at first. I attached only the video, as my 100x photos look like any out of focus light. But can anyone confirm what these lights were and how they were able to move in circles and dash across the sky? My photos nor videos are good. It was nighttime, with a huge streetlight in front of me, and directly above me so it was hard to hold the camera still long enough to capture movement (which was on average every 10 - 30 minutes) nor do I have a good place to rest my phone as I was recording from my balcony.

My first thought was Starlink satellites. But these remained in position for about 3 hours (other than their random dashes and circling and moving around for a while). I checked satellite tracker but couldn't identify anything directly above me for these three hours. The Starlink sats were moving. I had two other witnesses to the movement of these lights.

I've attached an image with the best way I could describe the layout from my POV. The white triangle is the moon. The red dots are the final position of the moving lights. The main moving light being the center dot of the three red dots. The blue dot was where it originated from my POV, until it landed at its spot where it is red. The movements it did was not only in that straight line. Sometimes it got closer to the the bottom circle, sometimes the top, sometimes the other direction.

Date:
12/16/24 11:00 PM
The photos/videos were taken between 11 PM and 11:30 PM Peru Time. I do not know how much longer it was around as I went to sleep.

At 00:32 in the video, I zoom out and look at the most right light, which is the most bottom in my image. I don't think I recorded the one closer to the moon as it was at a harder angle to see.

EDIT: Attached a screencap showing the distance traveled.

 

[TurtleSnap]

Found this post today, which shows the type of light and speed of movement:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtyWbdT5rhQ


And this description from Reddit (
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOB/comments/1hh38be/i_saw_ufos_blending_in_with_the_stars/
) of someone else with a similar experience in South America:

"

I saw UFOs blending in with the stars

Testimony


I've been looking at the sky almost every night since December 3rd

I had never seen a UFO in my life. I live in Uruguay, in a place where light pollution is not low but you still get to see the stars.

I've seen them two times now, and they're disguising as stars or satellites, at least here.

The first one I thought it was a satellite, shined quite bright, moved along a line at the same speed continuously. Usual things to be seen. After about a minute it stopped. I questioned myself because the clouds were moving too and the parallax can fuck with you. Nope, it had stopped, and it was bright and I knew exactly which one it was. It didn't move anymore afterwards.

I've seen satellites and starlink chains and of course, they don't stop, and they don't shine as bright, they go on until you can't see them anymore.

Second one, 3 am, many nights after. I sometimes work at night at home, went out for a breather. Looked up again. Once more after a while, I spot what appears to be a satellite moving. After about 30 seconds it CHANGED direction and then after some more seconds it stopped completely.

Once again the clouds sparse clouds moving fucked with me but I know what I saw. If it was a star, which it wasn't, it had to be there at the same time the next night, just in case I was imagining things, so I checked the next night at 3 am once more. It wasn't there, the sneaky bastard

So yeah, besides the spectacular sightings you're having in some parts of the USA, wherever you are in the world, LOOK UP! You might spot them hiding in plain sight."

 

[Mendel]

Have you had a look at https://www.metabunk.org/threads/wh...ack-flares-mostly-reported-from-planes.12720/ and the videos of "racetrack" Starlink?

 

[TurtleSnap]

Have you had a look at https://www.metabunk.org/threads/wh...ack-flares-mostly-reported-from-planes.12720/ and the videos of "racetrack" Starlink?

I hadn't, but it doesn't seem relevant because the Starlink satellites don't stay in the same spot, especially for 3 hours and I went to track all Starlink sats, none in this area at several times during them hovering above.

 

[NorCal Dave]

The photos/videos were taken between 11 PM and 11:30 PM Peru Time. I do not know how much longer it was around as I went to sleep.

I gotta say, the video looks a lot like the object discussed in this thread:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/pr...new-jersey-out-of-focus-point-of-light.13838/

From your video and the video in the other thread:

While the shapes are a bit different, the pulsating almost "lightening" like filaments are very similar when watching the videos.

There are good people here that can track things, but they need an exact TIME, LOCATION and the DIRECTION you were looking. The first thing to do is eliminate the prosaic possibilities.

 

[Mendel]

I hadn't, but it doesn't seem relevant because the Starlink satellites don't stay in the same spot, especially for 3 hours and I went to track all Starlink sats, none in this area at several times during them hovering above.

Yes, they do though, i.e. the spot wanders somewhat (speed of the sun) that is being criss-crossed by on-station Starlink satellites.

 

[JMartJr]

Yes, they do though, i.e. the spot wanders somewhat (speed of the sun) that is being criss-crossed by on-station Starlink satellites.

It is also pretty easy to be watching a moving light that gets blocked by a cloud, and then spot a star that is assumed to be the same light. I mention it since clouds were specifically mentioned here:

I questioned myself because the clouds were moving too and the parallax can fuck with you. Nope, it had stopped, and it was bright and I knew exactly which one it was. It didn't move anymore afterwards.

I suppose the same thing could happen with a light the goes out in the area of the sky adjacent to a star of similar magnitude?

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I'm pretty confident that the two lights in the sky in your video are astronomical bodies - planets and/or bright stars. I could only guess which ones, which I'm not going to do with the lack of context and info.

Your illustration with dots on a map is difficult to interpret. You'd do better drawing a simple and intuitive view of the sky as you saw it, with the horizon on the bottom. Include the Moon and compass points. But please be sure the compass directions are correct.

In any case, you have the Moon in the northwest but it was actually in the northeast, so the illustration needs to be rotated.

The camera goes in and out of focus as the autofocus feature is confused by the lack of contrast in the scene. When a bright star or planet is out of focus you get this kind of odd flickering effect, which we've seen many times over the years in YT videos. The odd shape of the light on the left seems to be related to the shape of the aperture.

See: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/pr...ut-of-focus-point-of-light.13838/#post-330452

and

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/pr...ut-of-focus-point-of-light.13838/#post-330476

... I noticed it moving erratically. Up-down, side to side, doing circles. I was not able to capture the movement on my camera unfortunately,

The reason you weren't able to capture this movement with the camera is most likely because the movement was illusory. I suspect the movement was due to a well known illusion...

Spoiler: saccades

The apparent movement of a star due to unconscious eye movements, particularly saccades, is a phenomenon rooted in how our visual system processes information. Saccades are rapid, jerky movements of the eyes that reposition the line of sight. These movements occur unconsciously and are essential for scanning the visual field. During a saccade, visual processing is temporarily suppressed, a phenomenon known as saccadic suppression, which prevents blurring as the eyes move.

Even when trying to fixate on a star, the eyes perform small, involuntary movements. These include microsaccades, which are tiny, jerky movements that refresh the image on the retina; tremors, which are minuscule, high-frequency oscillations; and drifts, which are slow, wandering movements between microsaccades. Stars, being distant point sources of light, appear as small, bright spots against a dark background. Since stars lack clear edges and their light spreads minimally on the retina, any movement of the eyes causes the star's position to appear to shift slightly.

When the eyes perform saccades or microsaccades while fixated on a star, the light from the star strikes different parts of the retina, creating the illusion that the star is moving. The brain, in attempting to stabilize the visual input, can interpret these subtle shifts as movement of the star itself rather than as a result of eye movement. In low-light conditions, such as during stargazing, the brain is more sensitive to small changes in light intensity or position. This heightened sensitivity can amplify the perception of movement, making the star seem to "jump" or "dance."

it was hard to hold the camera still long enough to capture movement (which was on average every 10 - 30 minutes)

This sounds like a slow movement... like stars moving across the sky as the Earth rotates.

If you can, give us a daylight photo of the same scene, standing in the exact same place. The ideal thing would be to wait until the Sun lines up with the streetlight and tell us the exact time. We can work out the the compass directions from that.

In any case, why not go out at the same time at night and see if the same lights are in the sky.

 

[TurtleSnap]

Thank you all for the great information.

I will say, I'm not confident on the other two lights, as I never saw those move. That was relayed to me by others. I was only watching the middle because I saw it flying, then return further down closer to where it came from, then come back to this spot. There wasn't slow movement at first, that's what caught my eye.

I will follow your instructions and give better details and try to map that out more properly tomorrow! Apologies for my lack of clarity, I couldn't think of a better way to do that earlier without doxing where I was haha so you've given me some good ideas. The Starlink thing I wasn't sure about, because I used two tracker apps and ensured that there were no satellites in my area at least 3 times before concluding they weren't Starlink. If it's possible they weren't listed on these apps, and could remain stationary for several hours, it could have just been one Starlink satellite doing weird stuff? I lived in Phoenix before and saw Starlinks dozens of times, I had just never seen the movement this one made (as in the earlier youtube video) or just one moving alone.

Regarding the illusion, I've experienced this after I started watching them. I would think other lights were moving, but I realized it was some sort of visual issue pretty quick because they never moved great distances like the middle light in that video. The only reason that one caught my attention, was because it moved a great distance (as shown in my last attached screencap) and was moving like a plane, so I just thought it was a plane. I didn't pay it too much attention until it just stopped. Then maybe 5 -10 mins later it went halfway back down to where it came from, and while returning, it was making circular-type motions or side-to-side maneuvers.

Also, my girlfriend informed me there is a man in the town center that will rent his telescope to people. I'm going to try to have one of my guys go out there tomorrow and coordinate with him to get a clearer understanding if they come back. Tonight the sky is clear, and I have unfortunately not seen these points again. I did get a little enthusiastic seeing a new red dot in the sky, but it was far away and looked like a star to me. I used the sky tracker and I noticed it was Mars. Also a detail I left out in the original post, this was at cloud level, because I saw it in front of clouds, as well as clouds moving past it (within clouds). That's how I knew it wasn't a star or something like that and went down the satelitte route.

I am really hoping I get an opportunity to see this UAP again so I can have the telescope used to identify it. I did use the star tracker on the night this happened, and did not find any stars at its location. Tonight, everything lines up to either be a star, or aircraft. Left my phone out there on the balcony to record while I work tonight but tonight I started when I got home at around 11:45 PM. The movement I saw last time was sometime between 10:50 PM and 11:00 PM as I was heading out to the balcony.

Regarding your last point, I will try that tomorrow. Unfortunately I was not at home at the same time, as I had to go check out an old place I rented because it got broken into and they wanted me to confirm I wasn't responsible. Fun stuff. Hoping no break-in accusations tomorrow!

ETA: One thing I will mention, as I'm very skeptical myself, is someone mentioned that I could have confused the moving light with this one at some point. It's possible. The series of events was something like:

10:45: Joking with girlfriend I'll protect her when they come to Peru.
10:47: Go out to balcony to check quickly. See the plane. Taking note of it and watching rest of sky.
10:54: It stops and makes me suspicious with its maneuvers. I go back inside and get my girlfriend to reluctantly come confirm, as she never believed in any type of UAP.
10:58: She comes out. Says she saw it moving too. Shocked, surprised, so I call my other nonbeliever friend. Told him to use his S23 Ultra and zoom in. It's stabilizing above us at this point but I figured it will surely move again and start recording.

It was roughly something like that. My girlfriend saw it moving. That's when I started recording. She stated after that video that she saw the right one move, which I believed her, but I never saw it myself. Again, I was NOT expecting to see anything. And those few minutes I was inside, it could have kept moving or I confused it with another point when I went back out. I'm not saying I'm infallible. That's why I'm desperately trying to see it again, especially with the telescope.

The timing stuff is all estimates, I only have definitely the time of my first video. Both that night and tonight have been extremely long days and I'm exhausted. I'll stop editing and trying to provide more details now, because I don't want to provide false or estimated information. I'll update tomorrow.

 

[Mendel]

Also a detail I left out in the original post, this was at cloud level, because I saw it in front of clouds, as well as clouds moving past it (within clouds). That's how I knew it wasn't a star or something like that and went down the satelitte route.

Satellites don't move through clouds either.
It's hard to visually determine if a light is in front of cloud or behind, because clouds tend to be translucent, and not all clouds obscure all lights.

This is a zoomed-in (magnified) time lapse (sped up faster) video of Starlink:

Source: https://youtu.be/fe6P4MivMQs?si=qg36spZXDeyB4jv_

Sightings can show fewer satellites at a time than in this video.