NUFORC Sighting 153599

Occurred: 2020-02-25 06:10 Local
Reported: 2020-02-25 17:37 Pacific
Duration: 90 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Calgary, AB, Canada

Shape: Unknown

16 consecutive lights equidistant from each other.

On Tuesday February 25, 2020, at precisely 6:10 AM MST, I was leaving my residence and decided to look directly upwards into the night sky to observe the stars. It was a compulsion I had that I normally do not perform. At this time, the sky was clear and still dark. There was no moon present, at least not in my visual field of view.

I noticed a moving object high in the sky – at what I would estimate to be in the high upper atmosphere or beyond – I would say a lower satellite. And that is what I thought, it was a satellite traversing from west to east (measured from 260° W going towards 80°E). The observation was made close to 50.923767, -114.122889 – Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I was looking directly up and possibly 2° from the vertical and facing North – I want to stress, I was looking nearly upwards. My view to the north was blocked by my house and my back was to the south – this is important later.

At first I thought it was a satellite. Having observed satellites for many years (being in my 50’s), I know what one looks like as they traverse the sky – and this one looked no different than them. There were no flashing lights, it remained white without changing color and remained the same magnitude of brightness.

What caught my eye was it was being followed by another moving light, at the same pace. Not being able to judge height, and therefore distance, all I could do was record the time gap – approximately 5 seconds. Stranger now, was a third, then a fourth. I had counted 16 consecutive lights. All matched the same speed and course. NO DEVIATIONS. There is no telling how many lights previous to my looking up had passed. Also being late for work, there is no telling how many more were still in the cue. These were not planes flying formation as this was a long linear line and no contrails. The lights covered an arc angle of approximately 30 degrees in the 5 seconds.

This was absolutely not a series of meteors. Too slow and no trails as well as brightness never wavered. I have observed many meteors, both high atmosphere burn outs and low atmosphere brilliant "burn outs". This was none of them.

I am a professional engineer of 30 years who prides myself in being open but logical. I thought that these could be satellites, so I checked the satellite map when I got to work. Enclosed is a snapshot of the map (available on request). My interpretation of the map shows NO satellites (at least 16 equi-distanced) directly above me from west to east. The map was set to the time of my observation.

I attempted to take a video, but it was too dark and the phone was not able to record the lights.

Posted 2020-04-09