Retired F-18 Pilot Reports 5 UAPs Pacing His Aircraft Over Channel Islands 8-18-22

[jarlrmai]

iPhone 13 Pro IR lights visible in a mirror, looking similar.
View attachment 54328

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/198reyv/stewardess_notices_a_pink_object_in_the_sky/


A reddit thread with more IR focus lights reflected in a plane window?

 

[flarkey]

Video on this page. Looks very like the iPhone autofocus lights.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/ne...seen-a-ufo-heres-my-picture-proof/ar-AA1n2QMK

 

[Mick West]

Video on this page. Looks very like the iPhone autofocus lights.

And multiple reflections in the three-pane window.

 

[jarlrmai]

From the MSN article

Denisa, 36, was working on a flight from Luton to Syzmany in Poland when as she flew across Europe she spotted a stunning view out of the window. She grabbed her phone and took a video - and thought nothing more of it.


But, when she took a look back at what she had filmed she got a shock. For reviewing the footage 20 minutes later, she saw an unidentified object - like not she's ever seen before.

So it's also one of those noticed after the fact videos, if there was 3 huge pink flashing lights outside the window, your peripheral vision would have likely picked them up and also passengers other crew would have noticed.

None of the articles mentions a phone model so hard to match

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

Now, back to what the "light" may be... I think that the light seen here is again a flaring Starlink satellite, and by checking on In-The-Sky.org at the time indicated (2022-08-18 07.19UTC) we can see that there were illuminated Starlink satellites in this exact region of the sky near Merak in the Big Dipper. I've taken the observer's lat long from the flight track kml as the plane flies close to Malibu.

I'm trying to reproduce this. I'm using stellarium and in-the-sky[dot]org and they are showing the big dipper in the same spot, and a seemingly same/similar number of Starlink satellites near and below the angular altitude of the star Merak. But the satellite labels are completely different.

in-the-sky shows STARLINK-4073 visible just to the right of Merak. Stellarium shows STARLINK-2700 or STARLINK-1272 in that location. (or maybe a different one, seconds make a big difference in satellite position and I don't know the coordinate precision of the satellite locations, so it might not be those exact satellites). Stellarium shows STARLINK-4073 being not anywhere close though. It's on like the other side of the world. Not just seconds of time away which maybe could be a rounding error or some imprecision by the application.

Am I doing something wrong? Are satellite labels consistent across databases? Am I tired and messing up my timezones? The lat/long and time on in-the-sky[dot]org and stellarium look the same to me.

(Big dipper view in Stellarium at location: 33.63ºN, 118.63ºW; time: 2022-08-18 00:19:15-07:00; matching in-the-sky image above)

(Stellarium's idea of where STARLINK-4073 is at 33.63ºN, 118.63ºW; time: 2022-08-18 00:19:15-07:00. Not close to big dipper)

If I fast forward, STARLINK-4073 actually does arrive at the location just to the right of Merak, NNW in the sky, roughly 39 minutes later, at 2022-08-18 00:58:15-07:00. (see below)

But by 00:58:15-07:00, the Sun is now offset ~+10º CW from Merak, and Stellarium thinks none of of the Starlink satellites around the Big Dipper are visible. (see below)

 

[flarkey]

I'm trying to reproduce this. I'm using stellarium and in-the-sky[dot]org and they are showing the big dipper in the same spot, and a seemingly same/similar number of Starlink satellites near and below the angular altitude of the star Merak. But the satellite labels are completely different.

in-the-sky shows STARLINK-4073 visible just to the right of Merak. Stellarium shows STARLINK-2700 or STARLINK-1272 in that location. (or maybe a different one, seconds make a big difference in satellite position and I don't know the coordinate precision of the satellite locations, so it might not be those exact satellites). Stellarium shows STARLINK-4073 being not anywhere close though. It's on like the other side of the world. Not just seconds of time away which maybe could be a rounding error or some imprecision by the application.

which satellite orbital datasets are you using (TLEs, or two line elements) ? Stellarium will default to the latest and currently valid element sets - it will download them from celetrak. In-the-sky has an archive of TLEs so it will use the ones that were valid on the day you set it to. They will be different and might account for what you are seeing.

You need to set stellarium up to use a local file for satellite data rather than download from the internet. You can get sarlink TLEs from space-track.org (need an account)..

https://www.space-track.org/basicsp...AT_ID,EPOCH/format/3le/OBJECT_NAME/STARLINK~~

http://stellarium.org/files/guide.pdf page 193

Deselect "Update satellite data from internet sources", and then click 'update now'. That should open a window for you to select the TLE file.


File is attached. See if that works

 

[Slow Joe]

But if the "ufo" was visible by eye, and even before making video, it cannot be it. Unless we do not trust the person.

I do not trust anyone.
People see things that are not there for a multitude of reasons, and when the story is out, they will stick to their narrative and never contemplate the possibility that they might have been mistaken.