Since the satellite launch, sightings have been reported from Vancouver, British Columbia to Seattle and Portland in the Northwest to Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and California.
Videos of the satellites, spotted as they passed overhead Wednesday night, were posted on social media by people from across the West, including the cities of Stockton, Bakersfield, Phoenix and Reno.
“Anyone see that long line of stars (idk what it is) across hammer heading to Lodi?” one Facebook user posted in a Stockton news group.
Another wrote: “Anyone else see this (it’s hard too see but was a bunch of lights in a line moving and went on for a few minutes.”
“(M)y fb feed is filled with people asking what were all the lights in the sky last night .. same answer ive seen over n over and a little bit of googling it appears to be STARLINK SATELITES,” a user in Calaveras County wrote in another Facebook group.
“Starlink is a satellite internet constellation being constructed by SpaceX providing satellite Internet access. The constellation will consist of thousands of mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), working in combination with ground transceivers.”
The row of lights looks like 60 stars strung closely together in a straight line.
According to SpaceX’s Starlink tracker website, the string will not be visible after Wednesday. By 4:49 a.m. on Thursday, though, it will be visible in the Los Angeles area.
SpaceX, founded in 2002 by billionaire business magnate Elon Musk, was also in the news Wednesday for landing one of its Starship spacecraft prototypes two weeks after NASA selected the spacecraft to fly astronauts to the moon.
SpaceX has sent hundreds of other Starlink satellites into space. This latest Starlink mission means SpaceX has now sent 1,565 Starlink satellites into orbit to beam broadband signals around the world.
© 2021 The Record (Stockton, Calif.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
