Reddit thread 'UAP spotted at 35,000 feet' [Starlink]

[jarlrmai]

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1f20ar2/uap_spotted_at_35000_feet/

Another popular Reddit thread video from a pilot.

I'll try to get the relevant info for the OP that we know so far

I'm an Airline pilot and was flying over the Atlantic Ocean when me and captain spotted these orb of lights that kept moving around each other and one point we saw them move at incredible speeds and stop and hover instantaneously. It was at that moment I took out my phone to record them. Through out the night we kept seeing them. One would show up then another out of nowhere. I have another video showing two of them and I turn the camera showing another group to the South.

Gathering so far

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https://i.redd.it/taypvr8bu3ld1.jpeg

iPhone 14 Pro Max 24mm FF equiv

For all those asking here is the location and time my IPhone says we were at the time I recorded the video. We were traveling at about 512 knots at flight level 350 going Northwest over the Atlantic. The location the gps in my phone shows us just over Grand Bahamas International Airport.

https://geohack.toolforge.org/geoha...26_33_31_N_078_41_44_W_region:BS_type:airport

https://www.google.com/maps?ll=26.558611,-78.695556&q=26.558611,-78.695556&hl=en&t=m&z=14

Things to note GPS does work in planes, plane mode turns it off, but it's a bit of a coincidence they are over an airport while shooting? Departure airport?

Also time no zone is given and given the time zone issue we have with phone really there's no way to know the real world time, I have asked for flight number in a thread. But we can look for Frontier planes that crossed Grand Bahamas International Airport at :50 hours within a deviation from 22:50 EST?

Reddit history I deduce the guy flys for Frontier (seems to be a cadet or a recent cadet based on history) do cadets fly?

He made this post


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/frontiercadetprogram/comments/1eof9oe/for_those_cadets_who_havent_received_the_update/


Which links to this video


Source: https://vimeo.com/996833953/46a2a67398


https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-biffle-8856591/

Looks like Starlink maybe?

 

[Mendel]

Things to note GPS does work in planes, plane mode turns it off,

no it doesn't turn it off

but it's a bit of a coincidence they are over an airport while shooting? Departure airport?

the airport might be a waypoint on that route, wouldn't need to be anything special

it would motivate the pilots to look out the window to check their position, and thus cause them to start observing the phenomenon which may have been ongoing. there is no point looking outside when you know there's only darkness there, but when you expect to see a lit airport, it makes sense

 

[flarkey]

Things to note GPS does work in planes, plane mode turns it off, but it's a bit of a coincidence they are over an airport while shooting? Departure airport?

We've had this before - the location isn't a GPS location, its taken from the cell tower that the phone was connected to before it was put into FlightMode. So yes, possibly departure airport, but do Frontier operate out of Freeport?

 

[flarkey]

Aircraft in the area assuming that the time of 2250 is Eastern Daylight Time.

note that FFT3572 took off from from San Juan in Puerto Rico, which is also on EDT, and is at 35,000ft.

... and they are in the Starlink flare zone according to Sitrec

https://www.metabunk.org/u/jzNb5T.html

 

[jarlrmai]

As a side note it is pretty astonishing that we have to do this type of detective work when looking into sightings from pilots who really should know how important location and UTC time are to things.

If they just say flight number X at XX:XX UTC then its becomes easy.

It points less towards "I want to investigate this" and more towards a preconceived "it's aliens view"

also

We see satellites all the time and the way these moved were not satellites.

 

[jarlrmai]

Aircraft in the area assuming that the time of 2250 is Eastern Daylight Time.

note that FFT3572 took off from from San Juan in Puerto Rico, which is also on EDT, and is at 35,000ft.

View attachment 71032


... and they are in the Starlink flare zone according to Sitrec

https://www.metabunk.org/u/jzNb5T.html
View attachment 71033

Not even close to going over Freeport..

It looks like there's also a thunderstorm going on you see flashes in the clouds at certain points of the video.

 

[jarlrmai]

No Frontier flights from Freeport.

https://flights.flyfrontier.com/en/sitemap/flights-from-city/page-1

 

[Mendel]

As a side note it is pretty astonishing that we have to do this type of detective work when looking into sightings from pilots who really should know how important location and UTC time are to things.

If they just say flight number X at XX:XX UTC then its becomes easy.

It points less towards "I want to investigate this" and more towards a preconceived "it's aliens view"

it's fairly recent and there's a lot of data
I'd say it's one of the better reports in that respect

 

[flarkey]

Its interesting that the two top posts currently on https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/ are Starlink satellites seen from aircraft...

 

[deirdre]

are Starlink satellites

starlinks can flash colors like the op vid? or are the colors a camera artifact?

 

[jarlrmai]

starlinks can flash colors like the op vid? or are the colors a camera artifact?

It's scintillation (Twinkling) caused by the atmosphere, the same effect that causes bright stars like Sirius to flash different colours.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkling

Twinkling, also called scintillation, is a generic term for variations in apparent brightness, colour, or position of a distant luminous object viewed through a medium.[1]​

There's a claim in the Reddit thread that it is not this because the jet is at 35000 feet and as such the atmosphere is thinner, but they are looking across rather than directly up, so there is still some significant atmosphere in the way.

 

[JMartJr]

I have another video showing two of them and I turn the camera showing another group to the South.

Has that been shared? My understanding of the Starlink flaring phenomenon is that another group in the opposite direction would not be possible -- is this understanding correct? If so, and if there was another phenomenon to the South, it must be something else...

I'll note in passing the big bright reflections in the windows of cockpit lights -- not a factor in the sighting to the North, but a possible source of confusion once the "OMG there's UFOs everywhere!" adrenaline kicks in...

 

[jarlrmai]

it's fairly recent and there's a lot of data
I'd say it's one of the better reports in that respect

There's seemingly a lot of data but the location is not 100% verified and the time/date is unzoned and we have had issues with accurate locations and times from exif on mobile phone imagery before.

 

[FatPhil]

There's a claim in the Reddit thread that it is not this because the jet is at 35000 feet and as such the atmosphere is thinner, but they are looking across rather than directly up, so there is still some significant atmosphere in the way.

Yup, just fermi-ing the numbers, they're looking though well over a thousand kilometers (more like 2?) of rarefied atmosphere, but at such a shallow angle it's further rarefying at way less than the tenth of the rate it would were they looking up (using sin(x)~x for small angles), and they're only starting off with a 1/4 initial rarefaction (2 x 5km halvings). That's plenty of atmosphere in their way. Sanity check - do the stars also twinkle? If they do, there's enough.

 

[jarlrmai]

I don't think any stars show up in the video unfortunately as it would give us the direction they are looking in.

 

[flarkey]

I don't think any stars show up in the video unfortunately as it would give us the direction they are looking in.

The handle of the Big Dipper is briefly visible at the start of the video, top right of this screnshot....

 

[Mick West]

We've had this before - the location isn't a GPS location, its taken from the cell tower that the phone was connected to before it was put into FlightMode. So yes, possibly departure airport, but do Frontier operate out of Freeport?

The GPS on my iPhone 13 worked intermittently in airplane mode when I flew down to Pasadena a couple of months ago. Some images had a location, some had no location. None of them had Sacramento airport.

 

[Nyx]

At 26s into his video (and right at the start) we can clearly see the big dipper's handle, and that the objects of interest are directly below the tip of the handle (Alkaid) in the sky. Alkaid is at 22 degrees elevation above the horizon and Phad (lower left corner of the dipper's cup) at 8 degrees elevation for the given time and location in the video, which appears to match. You can also see the star Cor Caroli dimly flickering in and out of focus/soupy atmosphere above and to the left of the objects at about 10 degrees elevation when he's zoomed out. This places the objects roughly 5 degrees above the horizon and almost directly to the NW.

If the date/time/location provided are correct (I believe they're at least close based on the matching star positions) then I think it's Starlink-5518 and Starlink-5099, though there are a bunch of other Starlink sats in the vicinity at the time. It's possible he saw a similar visual conjunction of Starlink 3761, 3275, and 31409 a few moments earlier which caused him to start filming. In the process of setting up his phone to film he may not have realized a different set of satellites (with different apparent motions) had become illuminated in the same location which could've caused significant confusion.

However, if the GPS location is wrong then I think it's way too hard to identify the exact Starlink tail numbers unless he gives us a flight number.

Some screenshots of in-the-sky below showing the relevant satellites and their positions relative to the stars we can see in the video.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I've done my best to match the visible stars in the video to the local time in the Bahamas on Aug 19th.

-The local time in Stellarium is set to Bahamas local time. Eastern Daylight Time. GMT -4.
-Location is set to Grand Bahamas International Airport, and elevation to 10,700 meters.
-The photo is tilted. I corrected the tilt as best as I could.
-The four visible stars are part of Usra Major. Three of them make up the handle and one of them is the lower left corner of the bowl of the dipper, with one star missing due to being dim and low to the horizon. I'm counting Mizar and Alcor as one. Megrez is the missing one.


The first thing to do is correct the tilt of the photo. I rotated it 7 degrees counter clockwise.

This is enhanced, cropped, rotated 7 degrees and labeled. One star is missing. Megrez should be between Alioth and Phecda, and is the upper left corner of the bowl. Phecda is the lower left corner of the bowl of the dipper. As Megrez is by far the dimmest of these stars, it's not strange that the camera sensor didn't capture it.

Considering the uncertainties, 22:50 is a good match. UTC = Aug 20, 02:50.

... If this really is the Bahamas...

...and it really was Aug. 19...

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

thtflyingguy[S] 588 points 1 day ago

We see satellites all the time and the way these moved were not satellites.

When a UFO witness spontaneously says, "It's not 'X'," there's a 95% chance it's X.

 

[MapperGuy]

When a UFO witness spontaneously says, "It's not 'X'," there's a 95% chance it's X.

Is there a list of maxims for the UFO community? Because if there is this should be on it!

 

[adavison]

Is there a list of maxims for the UFO community? Because if there is this should be on it!

Another one is the description never matches what's seen in the video.

 

[Nyx]

Confirmed with OP that the flight was FFT3572.

Based on the flightradar coordinates shared above and a time of 0250 UTC on 20 Aug that makes Starlink-30399 and Starlink-31409 the culprits. 31409 passes left to right below 30399 just like in the video, due NW at a horizon elevation angle of 5 degrees. I shared Mr. West's youtube video with the pilot showing how Starlink's design leads to bright specular reflections for pilots at altitude. Hopefully he shares it with all his pilot buddies, since they'll probably be seeing more and more of these in the coming years.

 

[Ann K]

Another one is the description never matches what's seen in the video.

I think that's a subset of "The headline writer is not the one who wrote the story".

 

[Ravi]

Another one is the description never matches what's seen in the video.

Another one is the distance estimations. Like "it was roughly 1230 miles away" (how do you know?), or "it was hoovering above the neighbours house" (it was a star).

 

[adavison]

I think that's a subset of "The headline writer is not the one who wrote the story".

No, I was talking about the eye witness descriptions.

 

[saucerpilot]

In the first video, the last one of the lights to be visible appears to change course and start moving up and to the right. I am assuming that is an illusion. But is it?

Also, have they shared their second video yet?