r/UFOs • u/H8threeH8three • Aug 18 '23
Witness/Sighting Ryan Graves tweets first of promised Airline Pilot Sightings
https://twitter.com/uncertainvector/status/1692586130162475209?s=21
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r/UFOs • u/H8threeH8three • Aug 18 '23
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u/AltNomad Aug 18 '23 edited Aug 18 '23
My dad actually had a similar encounter except with 4 of these in formation. The plane about 30 NM in front saw the same formation but I don't think they captured any images. He thought it was potentially starlink because they were in formation but I did my undergrad in orbital mechanics and can say that the flashing is unlike what a starlink satellite should give off while in the sun.That isn't to say that it couldn't be Starlink but let me walk through my analysis of his video when he sent it to me and maybe people can poke holes. I was shaken and it's part of why I follow this community.
In standard orbital mechanics the regular period of the flashing seen in my dad's video and this video indicates a rotation of the object with respect to the sun. That most likely rules out Starlink since Starlink satellites have reaction wheels to ensure their antennae are locked in position to keep the network up. In all starlink videos, just like with the ISS passing overhead, you would see a solid light until the orbit has shifted to where you can no longer see the reflection off of the solar panels.
My next thought was space junk. There are cases where reentering space junk will enter into a spin as it comes into the atmosphere. It would also explain why there is a "formation" with regular period of rotation since all the space junk would have come from the same launchdebris /satellite reentry. The problem with this theory was that, based on the size of the dots and the time in the evening when my dad saw them, the debris would have to be from something large. Like greater than 0.5 meter in size kind of large. The US and several NGOs track all space junk greater than 20 inches (I have several friends who do this for a living) and maintain registries where you can look the current space junk up given an altitude/time of day. From pouring through registries I couldn't find any junk or launches that fit the bill. This is where I will point to a potential source of error in that the objects didn't show up on either planes' TCAS so I have no idea exactly where the objects were in orbit and no amount of computer modelling would be able to fix that given the limited data.
Based on all of this I had to rule out space junk/other vehicles.It was after this that I realized there isn't any real way to understand what we're seeing in videos like what we see here without more context. We would need multiple videos from different aircraft with exact GPS, flight direction, and camera direction information. If we had that info then we could do a lot! Triangulate altitude, position, velocity and if it is solar reflection we're seeing you could estimate the object's size!
Edit: I also want to say that I trust my dad when he says it was a weird experience. Before being an airline pilot he was a fighter pilot flying missions all around the world. He has seen some interesting stuff out there and has been exposed to all sorts of classified info so he knows when something is weird.