A lot of people seem to mix up satellite flares for UFOs

I keep seeing videos online where someone gets excited about a light moving in a straight line, but it's almost always just the ISS or a satellite flare. I was camping in Joshua Tree last summer and saw one myself, a bright silent flash that looked weird until I checked a tracker app. How do you guys tell the difference before jumping to conclusions?

4 comments

4 Comments

pat_moore2mo ago

That tracker app logic is flawed because it only shows known objects. My cousin in New Mexico filmed a light last year that did a perfect 90-degree turn, stopped for ten seconds, then shot off. No satellite on any public database can do that. The official stuff just covers up what they can't explain.

patricia2622mo ago

But that's the whole problem, isn't it? Every single time, it's a cousin or a friend who has the footage. Did your cousin ever post it anywhere public? And did they rule out things like drones or military flares, which can do weird maneuvers? Without that, it's just another story that gets added to the pile.

aaron7401mo ago

My buddy had something similar happen a few years back. He works at an airfield so he knows what normal planes look like. We were out late and this light cut across the sky, stopped on a dime, then shot straight up. No noise. I pulled up my flight tracker and nothing was up there. We filed a report with MUFON just to have someone look at it. They came back and said it didn't match any known aircraft or satellite. Sometimes you just gotta trust what you saw with your own eyes.

emery2902mo ago

Totally saw something like that in Arizona last summer!