Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...
Nope! Not him! But it sure was a crazy experience, and one that gave me more than a little pause as it unfolded. (Screenshot of the cover of the very first Superman comic book taken from Wikipedia.)
I've written before that I am an early riser and that I enjoy looking at the night sky when I take Pepper out to do her business. Just recently I've posted pictures of the moon in a bank of clouds and of a shooting star I happened to catch. But this morning I saw something that I wasn't sure I was seeing.
Where normally I would see the Big Dipper, I saw a straight line of stars.
I grabbed my phone and began snapping, still not sure of what I was seeing.
All in all, I counted at least fifteen of them, all in a very straight line. And then they started fading until I could no longer see them. Puzzled, I came back into the house, got Pepper her breakfast, and then came upstairs to do a little research and thinking.
I'll be honest. I have had three experiences with unexplained phenomena in the sky, two of which were absolutely terrifying and none of which I have ever been able to explain. Was this something similar?
The downloaded pictures gave me a clue to the solution. As I enlarged and then compared the pictures of fifteen lights to the other stars sharing the night sky with them, I noticed that the fifteen lights were elongated - that meant they were closer to earth and moving. A Google search gave me the answer.
Lucky me, I'd been outside and looking up just at the right time! I'd seen a string of SpaceX Starlink Satellites!
Today is March 3 and there was only a two minute window to see them. I'd just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It looks as though I can do the same again for the next few days, too. (As I write this an hour and a half later, the tracker shows that that string is already visible over the Pacific Ocean.)
I mentioned earlier that I have seen some unexplained phenomena. Years after they happened, I finally wrote them down in my journal. I just looked them up and reread them and, not gonna lie, that fear and panic I felt way back when came over me again. I may share them here, I may not.
Something I will share, though, is the March give away. It will be posted tomorrow so stay 'tooned!
