Satellite trains
NONE RECENT0RECENT BATCHES
No constellation batch has launched in the last four days, so a line of moving lights tonight is less likely to be a satellite train.
SYS // OVERHEAD
What is actually up there
Saw something you cannot place? Work it out here: what launched in the last four days, where the Space Station is right now, what came down, and what each of the usual suspects looks like from the ground.
Space station
TRACKED432KM UP
The brightest human-made object in the night sky, and the most commonly misidentified. It is a single steady white light that crosses in about five minutes and never blinks.
Recent launches
IN THE WINDOW2MISSIONS
Successful launches in the last four days, closest in time first. Anything that reached orbit put something new in the sky.
Fireballs
DETECTED2IN 30 DAYS
Atmospheric impacts catalogued worldwide in the last 30 days. A bolide is a single brilliant flash lasting a second or two, often breaking into fragments — the most common cause of a "what on earth was that" report after satellite trains.
What went up in the last four days
Every successful launch in the window, closest in time first. If you saw something you cannot place, start here.
SpaceX · Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA · 2026-10-10 07:39:44Z
Long March 12 | SatNet LEO Group 27
68 hours agoChina Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation · Wenchang Space Launch Site, People's Republic of China · 2026-10-09 19:27:00Z
What came down
A launch explains a line of lights, not a single brilliant flash. These are the atmospheric impacts US Government sensors detected, with NASA/JPL's own figures — not an interpretation of what anybody saw.
BOLIDE LOG
6 RECORDED
Objects large enough to be detected breaking up in the atmosphere, as catalogued by NASA/JPL's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. A single brilliant flash lasting a second or two is the report these explain; almost all of them release their energy tens of kilometres up and nothing reaches the ground.
- 2026-10-04 03:14Z41.8° S, 173.1° W
0.18KT IMPACT ENERGY
Roughly 180 tonnes of TNT, released as light and heat high in the atmosphere rather than at the ground.
- BROKE UP
- 26.9 km up
- ENTRY
- 13.8 km/s · 49,680 km/h
- 2026-09-15 11:26Z37.6° S, 161.6° W
0.08KT IMPACT ENERGY
About 79 tonnes of TNT — the object was likely under a metre across and burned up entirely.
- BROKE UP
- 37.0 km up
- 2026-09-11 10:18Z0.2° S, 129.6° W
0.20KT IMPACT ENERGY
Roughly 200 tonnes of TNT, released as light and heat high in the atmosphere rather than at the ground.
- BROKE UP
- 70.0 km up
- 2026-09-11 01:12Z54.4° N, 100.1° W
0.67KT IMPACT ENERGY
Roughly 670 tonnes of TNT, released as light and heat high in the atmosphere rather than at the ground.
- BROKE UP
- 38.0 km up
- ENTRY
- 20.7 km/s · 74,520 km/h
- 2026-09-10 05:22Z19.3° S, 28.1° W
0.33KT IMPACT ENERGY
Roughly 330 tonnes of TNT, released as light and heat high in the atmosphere rather than at the ground.
- BROKE UP
- 33.6 km up
- ENTRY
- 19.3 km/s · 69,480 km/h
- 2026-08-15 07:32Z4.0° N, 115.4° W
0.13KT IMPACT ENERGY
Roughly 130 tonnes of TNT, released as light and heat high in the atmosphere rather than at the ground.
- BROKE UP
- 37.0 km up
What it probably was
A field guide to the things most often reported, and how to tell them apart from the ground.
A satellite train
A line of evenly spaced lights, all moving together in the same direction, silent, taking a few minutes to cross the sky.
TELLCheck the launch list below. A batch launched in the last few nights is the answer far more often than not.
The Space Station
A single very bright, steady white light moving steadily across the sky, brighter than any star, gone in about five minutes. No flashing.
TELLIt never flashes and never changes direction. The live tracker on this site says where it is right now.
A rocket plume at twilight
An expanding, glowing spiral or jellyfish-shaped cloud, sometimes enormous, usually shortly after dark or before dawn.
TELLSunlight catching exhaust in the upper atmosphere while the ground is already dark. Almost always within an hour of a launch, and visible for hundreds of kilometres.
Re-entering debris
Several fragments travelling together on the same path, glowing orange or yellow, slower than a meteor and lasting far longer.
TELLA meteor is over in a second or two. Debris re-entry can last a minute and visibly breaks apart.
Starlink or a bright flare
A brief, intense flash from a moving point of light that then fades.
TELLSunlight glinting off a flat panel. It brightens and dims smoothly rather than blinking.
An aircraft
Steady motion with red and green navigation lights and a regular strobe.
TELLAnything that blinks in a regular rhythm is almost certainly an aircraft. Nothing in orbit flashes.
The official record
Primary sources, linked rather than reproduced. Described by what they are, not by what they concluded — these servers refuse automated requests, so we will not summarise a document we have not opened.
- US Department of DefenseAll-domain Anomaly Resolution Office The office the US government established in 2022 to receive, catalogue and investigate reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena across air, space, sea and land. It publishes case resolutions and annual reports to Congress.
- Office of the Director of National IntelligencePreliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena The June 2021 assessment that put the subject on the official record, prepared for Congress by the ODNI. It is the document most later reporting traces back to.
- NASAUAP Independent Study Team report NASA convened an independent panel of scientists to advise on how UAP data could be studied with the ordinary tools of science rather than of intelligence. Its report was published in September 2023.
- US National ArchivesProject Blue Book records The US Air Force's own investigation, running from 1952 to 1969, and its case files. The archive is the primary source for the historical era of the subject.
Current reporting
Coverage from the spaceflight press. News articles, not evidence — listed because they are what is being written, not because this site endorses any claim in them.
Arstechnica
The US military just released a bunch of UAP files, but there's no there there
Here at Ars Technica, we do not preclude the possibility that aliens have visited Earth.
Reported and summarised by Arstechnica. Opens in a new tab.
Want to fly one yourself? Delta-V is a gravity-flight sim, free on Android.GET IT ON GOOGLE PLAY — FREE
Standing questions
The ones asked every time something bright goes over.
- I saw a line of lights moving across the sky. What was it?
- Almost certainly a satellite train, most often Starlink. A batch launch releases dozens of satellites into the same orbit at once, and for the first few nights they cross the sky as an evenly spaced line of steady lights, silent, taking two to five minutes end to end. The giveaway is that they do not blink: aircraft navigation lights strobe in a regular rhythm and nothing in orbit does. The launches of the last four days are listed above so you can check.
- Does this site have a database of UFO sightings?
- No, and deliberately so. The established sightings databases forbid republication, and the official US record — AARO and ODNI — blocks server requests from datacentres, so we link to it rather than mirroring it. What this page does instead is answer the question those databases cannot: what was demonstrably up there at the time, from the launch manifest, the Space Station's position and the catalogue of detected atmospheric impacts.
How this page is sourced
Launch data is from The Space Devs’ Launch Library 2. Station position is from a live public feed. Reporting is from the Spaceflight News API, which indexes spaceflight publications — it is used here in preference to a general news index precisely because it does not surface tabloid coverage.
There is no sightings database on this page. The best-known one forbids scraping and redistribution in its own terms, and the official US archives block automated requests from servers, so they are linked for you to read directly. Nothing on this page asserts what any official report concluded.