UFO Swarm - Springfield, Massachusetts [likely Starlink]

[Maury Markowitz]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJB2l00U-A&feature=youtu.be


The was a recent thread here about identifying a number of satellites seen in a video and lining them up with particular Starlink satellites. I'm wondering if anyone can recommend an iOS (or macOS) program that might be useful for doing this? It would have to:

1) easily allow you to select a location, preferably by town/city name
2) easily allow you to
2) give you the view from the ground looking up, populated with bright stars and planets for orientation

... and from there, see the LEO sats above that site in a given direction?

Heavens-above does this apparently, but is Android only. Their website has a perfectly useful view, but does not appear to let you set the time and location. I tried a couple of iOS apps, but they generally lacked some/all of these features and/or had monthly recurring payments. The only one that seems suitable is GoSatWatch, but I don't have many details on it.

 

[Maury Markowitz]

Oh, and if anyone's wondering, here's the thread on Reddit that sparked the question:


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1fbg5ip/longer_shot_of_ufo_uap_swarms_in_northwestern/


Note how similar it is to the one from Montana posted earlier this week - the flare zone is below the Big Dipper so they are easy to orient.

 

[jarlrmai]

We use generally use Stellarium and the TLEs for the specific date of the sighting. Although sitrec can probably do this for you now.

Doing it on a phone is fiddly as hell I imagine.

The timestamp was 11:07 I'm in Western Massachusetts. It's a tiny ruralish area west of springfield near the Berkshires. Seconds I can't get, I just right clicked on the original file. But I think there's a way to get a timestamp on it. I'll try to do so in the future. This is all still pretty new to me.

So maybe around here 42.17265768395698, -72.927173369063

This video was taken last night 9/6/24 around 11:10pm EST

https://www.metabunk.org/u/zGdgM8.html

 

[jarlrmai]

I think OPs video starts at around 03:04:24 UTC

There's 2 Starlinks where one over takes the other at the start, just under the handle of the Big Dipper

But it could be 2 similar ones later on, I dont have the time to do a video match now but hopefully someone might.

Actually scrolling on there are so many Starlinks there that it could be later on.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

The first thing you notice in his videos is Ursa Major. Why do all of these "It's not Star Link" videos show the Big Dipper? Just exactly where you'd expect to see Star Link in the northern hemisphere summer?

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

He has several other videos on his YT channel. All of them show obvious satellites or aircraft lights.

From Reddit

More proof that this is not Starlink in the video I just posted of the same event, tonight at 10:44EST, of these things flying BELOW THE CLOUDS. Starlink does not operate below 10,000ft as far as I know.


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1fbo2r6/cloudy_nights_bright_lights_uap_sept_7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

My reply:

This is a fundamental misunderstanding. They are in orbit, in space. They happen to be in orbit passing over a distant part of the Earth to the North of where you are.. Don't you also see the Sun and the Moon "below" the clouds? It's just a matter of your line of sight. Don't you also see stars and planets "below" the clouds? Are they in the atmosphere below 10,000 feet?

Over the years I've been puzzled by remarks by UFO witnesses of this sort: "It was too low to be a star." Somehow they think that a star can't be low on the horizon because that would put it in the atmosphere, below the clouds... ???

It's one of those surprising things you run across, as we often did when FE was the hot topic. It's such a simple, intuitive thing.

I would never have thought people were making that kind of intuitive mistake.

But... at least one of his videos on YT shows aircraft lights, which really are below the level of the clouds. He's making a classic mistake: Looking at different objects and putting them all in the same category.


He makes repeated remarks about the lights being steady, and that they are "changing directions." He also claims a retired "astronomy professor" told him that "...you'd have to be a clown to think that these are satellites." He later claims this remark was in answer to other earlier videos. Not this one.

My reply:

While I'm not a pro, I'm an experienced amateur astronomer. When I was first starting to look at the sky at the age of 13, in 1970, I was puzzled by satellites myself. These satellites you are watching look and behave exactly like satellites I've been looking at for 50+ years. They are in Ursa Major - the Big Dipper - just exactly where you'd expect to see Star Link, but not all of them have to be Star Link. Satellites don't have to move East to West and don't have to move parallel to your local horizon. They can flare or they can be steady. They might twinkle (scintillate) when really low to the horizon or they may not. I don't see any of them "rising" or changing directions. By "rising" you may be talking about them moving at a slant to your local horizon. That's just the slant at which they are orbiting. I hope you can understand that it's a matter of perspective. From where you stand, they may look like an airplane climbing, but to someone standing on another part of our Earth, it might look as if they're going down toward that person's local horizon.

 

[Maury Markowitz]

But it could be 2 similar ones later on, I dont have the time to do a video match now but hopefully someone might.

One issue is that I can't really be sure of the locations I'm seeing. They all disappear before they get to Phecda or Alioth, so they are not useful markers.

The only star that is visible in a useful location, just above the trees, I can't identify. It appears to be directly left along the line between Marek and Phecda, and down and to the left of Mizar, but for the life of me I can't figure it out. It's too far "up" to be La Superba, which would be below the Marek - Phecda line. TU Canum Venaticorum maybe? But that's dim. And once in a while, you can see another star below it right in the tree, what would that be? Maybe that's La Superba?

There's another along the Marek - Phecda line you can see, more to the right of Alioth. 5 Canum Venaticorum maybe?

I think this would all be a lot easier if I could positively identify these stars.

Now one thing that is potentially very useful is from around 34 to 45 seconds. You can see one going retrograde. Those are much more rare and should be easy to spot. So I watched at 5x from 3UTC to 4, and nothing goes through this area in that direction. SL-5218 is going in that general direction, but much too low elevation. It works if that one star is Chara, but that's way too low to be right?!

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

If this truly was recorded on Sept. 06, it looks as though it was about 10:00 p.m. EDT.

This is what I see...

It looks as though many of the satellites are in Canes Venatici.

I don't know what the thing marked "?" is. I suspect it's a landing light on an aircraft heading toward a local airport. It's heading mostly along the camera's line of sight, and this produces the familiar hovering illusion.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Note that this video is not playing at natural speed.

The only edits made to this video were to brighten the exposure, draw in an arrow, and sped it up by 1.4x speed to get a better idea of motion.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

From the Reddit thread in the OP

I linked it a few times here, of it travelling below the clouds last night. Ceiling was 10,000ft. That's the nail in the coffin for the Satellite theory.

This is the video to which he is referring. I don't think this is proof that the lights in the OP video are not satellites. I think he's looking at different things and putting them in the same category. We see satellites in the "Longer shot of UFO / UAP Swarms in Northwestern Skies (NOT STARLINK)" video and aircraft lights in this "Cloudy Nights" video.,

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1fbo2r6/cloudy_nights_bright_lights_uap_sept_7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button




I asked him what direction the camera was pointing that night.

Due north, northwest. If you drew a 45 degree angled line downward from Polaris, you'd end up in the area I was pointing.

It seems he lives in or near West Springfield, MA. There are two nearby airports, both with runways that point to the northwest.

I think the lights in this particular video are landing lights on distant aircraft heading SE toward one of the two airports. They appear and disappear suddenly as they are flying through scattered clouds. Some may be turning as well.

Although it has to be acknowledged that there's definitely a very slim chance that there's a break in the clouds and some satellites are peeking through.

West Springfield is pinned. The yellow line would be the approximate path of aircraft heading toward the Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport.

If the camera was pointing NW, the aircraft heading SE would be moving, mostly, toward the camera. Because the lines intersect at a shallow angle, the aircraft would tend to move slowly from the left edge of the frame toward our right. Which is what we see. The true situation is probably more complex. The aircraft may be making turns at some distant point. But I think this is pretty close to what's happening in general.

You've got to ask how many other times he's been looking at aircraft lights. What's the mix between satellites and aircraft lights? Does this mix happen at the same moment sometimes? He just seems to be very primed to see these things as strange.

 

[flarkey]

Here's his YouTube page, filled with videos of satellites and claims that they are something else.

https://www.youtube.com/@MrEthanelgin


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM0KwsVhHSY

and @Maury Markowitz - the best mobile app to view satellites in Realtime is in my opinion Stellarium. Things become a bit trickier when you want to view satellite positions from a date & time in the past because Stellarium (and most apps) use the currently valid orbital data, but the further back in time that you go the less accurate the orbital data (called TLEs) becomes and hence the predicted positions of the satellites may be wrong. I don't know of any mobile apps that will automatically pull in old orbital data for past-dates, but the in-the-sky.org website does. I've used it quite a bit in the Starlink flare investigations on here. You can get old tle data from other websites such as Celestrack and space-track.org.

@Mick West 's SItrec is very good for this, and I think now automatically imports the right orbital data for the date & time you set it to.
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?sitch=nightsky

 

[flarkey]

I asked him what direction the camera was pointing that night.


It seems he lives in or near West Springfield, MA. There are two nearby airports, both with runways that point to the northwest.

I think the lights in this particular video are landing lights on distant aircraft heading SE toward one of the two airports. They appear and disappear suddenly as they are flying through scattered clouds. Some may be turning as well.

I've found the location he recorded the videos from , I wont post it here for privacy reasons, but I can confirm it is in that general area. That should be close enough for Sitrec.

https://www.metabunk.org/u/T5fKjO.html

 

[Mick West]

@Mick West 's SItrec is very good for this, and I think now automatically imports the right orbital data for the date & time you set it to.
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?sitch=nightsky

Recently fixed!

After setting the date, under "File" click on "Update Starlink TLE for Date."

 

[Maury Markowitz]

@Mick West 's SItrec is very good for this

I have been trying to use this, but I'm getting mixed results. Perhaps it is because I am using Safari.

But... I'm still able to use it. I selected 42 north 75 west based on his description of being in the Berkshires. I then set the time to 3:05 based on his comments that it starts around 11:07 local. I scrubbed through over and over and I simply can't find that one retrograde sat.

Last night when I did this, it appeared to be SL-5546 in conjunction with SL-3389, but when I entered the same setup this morning I got different results and 5546 never comes into view. Mick, is that due to the change in the TLE data? Or did that happen earlier?

 

[Maury Markowitz]

I've found the location he recorded the videos from , but wont post it here for privacy reasons, it is in Amostown. That

He claims to be in the Berkshires, this location is considerably east of there (for some definitions of "considerably' at least). Can you tell me why you believe this is the location? Was the evidence from this video or one of the others?

I typed in 42.11 -72.66 to the View and set the Time to 2024/09/07 3:05:05 UTC. I still don't see anything going retrograde during this period. 5497 goes that general direction, but is far below and west of this location, and several minutes later. There are a number that go by earlier, but they are also all to the left of the view, like 5484 for instance.

It's possible that this is an aircraft, but it does look a whole lot like a SL, and I think if we can ID it we will have this solved.

it looks as though it was about 10:00 p.m. EDT.

I don't think so, I think 11 EDT is accurate. At 11 the line between Phecda and Marek is roughly parallel to the ground, as seen in the video. At 10 it's notably tilted in comparison, enough that the trees would look wonk if he was simply tilting the camera.

 

[flarkey]

He claims to be in the Berkshires, this location is considerably east of there (for some definitions of considerably at least). Can you tell me why you believe this is the location? Was it from this video or others?

I typed in 42.11 -72.66 to the View and set the Time to 2024/09/07 3:05:05 UTC. I still don't see anything going retrograde during this period. 5497 goes that direction, but is far below and west of this location, and several minutes later.

It's possible that this is an aircraft, but it does look a whole lot like a SL, and I think if we can ID it we will have this solved.

I'll send you a dm.

 

[Maury Markowitz]

I'll send you a dm.

LOLZ. It's not like he's hiding it very well!

 

[flarkey]

LOLZ. It's not like he's hiding it very well!

I'm just trying to be a nice guy

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I have been trying to use this, but I'm getting mixed results. Perhaps it is because I am using Safari.

But... I'm still able to use it. I selected 42 north 75 west based on his description of being in the Berkshires. I then set the time to 3:05 based on his comments that it starts around 11:07 local. I scrubbed through over and over and I simply can't find that one retrograde sat.

Last night when I did this, it appeared to be SL-5546 in conjunction with SL-3389, but when I entered the same setup this morning I got different results and 5546 never comes into view. Mick, is that due to the change in the TLE data? Or did that happen earlier?

Try around 10:07 p.m. EDT instead. I think it's a better match.

Note the relative position of Alkaid and Alioth for example. Or Alkaid and Megrez.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I've found the location he recorded the videos from , but wont post it here for privacy reasons, it is in Amostown. That should be close enough for Sitrec.
View attachment 71382
42.11 -72.66 https://www.metabunk.org/u/T5fKjO.html

Which means he's almost smackdab in line of sight of aircraft heading SE toward runway 15 at the Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1fbg5ip/comment/lm6lho2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Just check the weather last night at 10:40ish over West Springfield, Ma. I have an Uncle with the State Police, Drones would have to be licensed for that height, speed and amount of them. There is no nightly drones reported nor license filed anywhere in that Direction til almost Pittsfield which is about 70 miles away. And they're only once a month.

Why mention drones when he's just SE of the airport, and the camera is looking NW?

Pittsfield is only 38 miles to the NW, btw.

 

[flarkey]

Why mention drones when he's just SE of the airport, and the camera is looking NW?

Pittsfield is only 38 miles to the NW, btw.

Checking the weather the evening of Sept 7 approx 11pm ... the witness says it was total cloud cover, but the historic weather sites seem to suggest broken low cloud that would allow Starlink flares to be visible if the break was distant to the north.

33 views 8 Sept 2024
Just filmed tonight at 10:44pm EST. I do hope this puts to rest the ideas of this being Starlink. Here is the event, same as it always is, each night in the same place. However, Western Mass is overcast tonight. The cloud ceiling is around 10,000ft. Yet, here are the wee lights, dancing away as the always do BELOW the clouds.

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=42.161;-72.182;9&l=clouds-low&t=20240908/0200

https://zoom.earth/maps/satellite/#view=42.253811,-72.165986,9z/date=2024-09-08,03:00,+1

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

If this truly was recorded on Sept. 06, it looks as though it was about 10:00 p.m. EDT.

This is what I see...
View attachment 71376
It looks as though many of the satellites are in Canes Venatici.

I don't know what the thing marked "?" is. I suspect it's a landing light on an aircraft heading toward a local airport. It's heading mostly along the camera's line of sight, and this produces the familiar hovering illusion.

There are errors here, which I will correct later.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Try around 10:07 p.m. EDT instead. I think it's a better match.

Note the relative position of Alkaid and Alioth for example. Or Alkaid and Megrez.
View attachment 71386View attachment 71387
View attachment 71388

There's an error here, which I will correct later.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

New and improved. More contrast and corrected some errors. With all the camera movement and the satellites passing through, it's tough to keep track of everything, so I've labeled even minor stars, and all the things that I'm confident are satellites. I can't account for the thing labeled with the "?".

The tricky part about looking at video frames is that the stars are scintillating. Some frames show them bright and some don't show them at all. I've done this before, notably analyzing the videos of a Flat Earther who insists that the stars don't change during the year.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/cl...year-disproves-globe-earth.10324/#post-227537

In this frame, just moments before the frame above, Y Canum Venaticorum - La Superba - is more visible because it's clear of the tree leaves, but 5 Canum Venaticorum and 3 Canum Venaticorum are hardly visible. You've got to catch a frame where everything is bright.

I'll do more frames to catch other satellites... but that's enough for tonight.

The other error in the other post has to do with Stellarium unexpectedly kicking over to standard time. It's too tedious to explain why, but the important part is that I didn't notice. No excuse for that.

 

[flarkey]

New and improved. More contrast and corrected some errors. With all the camera movement and the satellites passing through, it's tough to keep track of everything, so I've labeled even minor stars, and all the things that I'm confident are satellites. I can't account for the thing labeled with the "?".
View attachment 71442

In which video and at what time code is the UAP "?" seen?

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Longview of UAP / UFO Swarm Friday 9/6 at 17 seconds.

It's in and out of the frame as the camera wanders about. But its relative position to the stars doesn't change.

Here's the last peek at it...

 

[flarkey]

The witness has just posted another 15min long video.

This was nearly the full 15 mins. Or the first half of the event. While I literally know nothing about video editing (yet). I found this black filter that cuts out all the noise so you can see the actual event. This was Sept 10th at around 10:50pm looking North Nothwest

Source: https://youtu.be/W1YyvWz07Us?si=U1LVRIQnhZXp3ipo

 

[flarkey]

Timestamped and video on tripod. Will see if I can sync it with Sitrec.

(apparently the timestamp month is wrong, but the OP says the day & time is accurate)


Source: https://youtu.be/Ks8G-oN0JHs?si=ngIfbYhKMWW0aRT2

 

[jarlrmai]

Is that EDT? YYYY/MM/DD? With the month being wrong. I mean come on how hard is it to get time and date right?

So

 

[jarlrmai]

The quality of that video seems lower than the previous ones as well.

 

[jarlrmai]

visible stars here

 

[jarlrmai]

So it seems the quality is worse because they are zooming in on the region and removing some context.

 

[jarlrmai]

More stars

 

[jarlrmai]

An attempt to put some of the video parts in context.

there's a few frames of establishing shots at the start, I've added the stars and one of the zoomed in parts (the small boxed in area that shows the objects to show how zoomed in they are, my feeling is the light amplification is showing the starlink flares through the thin cloud layer.

I am bad at stars and so far Astrometry has failed to id them, but if anyone can recognise the stars that would be helpful.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I commented on his "Ongoing UAP Event in Northwestern Sky, Black Filter / Strange Lights" video six hours ago - Sat Sept 14.

@zombywoof1072

6 hours ago (edited)
Suggestions:
-Use the regular "Green" setting - This "Black Filter" isn't as good.
-Set your camera to display the time and date on screen.
-Make sure your camera is set to the right local time down to the last second. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). You should use the NIST time site to set your clock. Or at least the time display on your phone.
-Leave the camera steady. Don't try to chase the lights. Just set the camera on your new tripod and let the camera run with out touching it.

@zombywoof1072

6 hours ago
Can you explain your equipment? What model camera are you using? What model night vision device? Is the camera separate from the night vision device? Or is it a Video Recording and Photography Telescope? (One piece.)

 

[JMartJr]

Can sitrec or similar predict the best times for this videographer to catch a starlink pass in the next week, say, ask them to record THAT, see if it looks to them like the UFOs? I hereby confess I have not sat down and learned how to actually use these cool tools Mick has made!

 

[saucerpilot]

pretty sure these stars are a match for the new video

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

It looks like I got scooped a bit. But I've got additional info.

These "regular stars" are in Ursa Minor and Draco. Kochab is second brightest star in the Little Dipper, after Polaris, which is out of frame. Pherkad and Pherkad Minor are easily recognizable.

It's important to note that this is not a solid overcast.

At the beginning of the video, Cor Caroli and β Canum Venaticorum are visible because there's a break in the clouds. Ursa Major is hidden behind the clouds.

Am I absolutely sure these are Cor Caroli and β Canum Venaticorum? No. But, about 90% now that I've taken a second look. With so little context, it's tough.

What I am sure of is that these are stars, and they're proof that there are breaks in the clouds. The satellites are popping up to our left. There are several areas of relatively clear sky.

Later in the video, Cor Caroli catches his attention for the first time.

Alright, just came to a full and complete stop. As you know, satellites do come to full and complete stops.

But it was always there. This is a classic UFO witness misperception. He's taken his eye off a satellite and refocused on a different object. A star. ...which has been there all along. Imagine if we only had an oral/written report.


Cor Caroli and HIP 64540... and a different satellite than in the frame from the beginning of the video. β Canum Venaticorum has set behind leaves.

In this frame we get a better look at HIP 64540 as it comes out from behind the wire, with 20 Canum Venaticorum still behind the wire. Scintillation is playing games with Cor Caroli.

Cor Caroli has been setting all this time. It disappears behind the leaves.

Edited to correct an error. Changed Alkaid to Cor Caroli.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

The witness is making cause and effect errors. There's a satellite heading "toward" Cor Caroli. When the satellite fades out, he perceives it as turning. He seems to have come up with his own term: "The triangle turn."

I think he means that it's turning sharply away from us, traces out one leg of a triangle, and then turns sharply back again... at the apex of the triangle... and traces out another leg of the triangle. With the base of the triangle being the blank part of the sky where it should have been if it had just kept moving along in a straight line... the way a satellite would.

The bright little guy appears, then comes back into view. The way a distant car would look as the headlights turn away from our line of sight and then back toward us. He's primed himself to see this kind of thing.

When he first sees the star (Cor Caroli) he perceives it as suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Therefore it's the same object he was concentrating on and looking at with his foveal vision. It just comes back into view after making a sharp turn. A triangle turn. I think that's what he's been talking about. All the maneuvers these things make.

Usually, the Big Dipper was around there somewhere, but you can't see it because there's clouds. Now, what you can see is the same, exact thing I see every single night. (Pause) Like the triangle turn.

In his mind, it seems, the satellite that was heading toward Cor Caroli made a radical left turn, then made a right turn back toward us, then parked like a car, shining its headlights at us. Clearly no satellite would or could make a maneuver like that. Checkmate, Debunkers.

Again, just imagine if this was orally reported eyewitness testimony with no video.