Did You See Something Strange In The Maine Skies Monday Night?

Sometimes, on a warm spring or summer night, it is fun to just sit outside and look up at the sky.  Providing you are far enough away from the streetlights (and your neighbor's house lights) you are bound to see some interesting things.  The moon, a few stars, the occasional plane flying overhead.  Normally, you can easily figure out what you are seeing.

Sometimes, however, you have a difficult time explaining what you saw.

That's what happened to one young woman who posted on the Augusta Maine Neighborhood Watch Facebook page.

Looking to the skies above Augusta on Monday evening, she saw something she could not immediately identify.  According to her post, it looks like a long line of lights that streaked across the sky and then disappeared.

People immediately started to comment on her post with their thoughts on what she may have seen.  Most of them were pretty convinced she had seen a formation of Elon Musk's Starlink satellites.

What Is Starlink?

For those who do not know, Starlink satellites are a product of Musk's SpaceX aerospace company.  The satellites, which are grouped into constellations, are able to provide internet to extremely rural parks on the country.  The company has been launching them since 2019 and, so far, there are over three thousand of the satellites in orbit.  The plan is for there to be as many as 42,000 of the birds in orbit.

This website shows where they are above the Earth - just in case you want to look up and try to spot them.

Why Are They Visible?

If it was Starlink satellites that she saw, they were visible because, even though it was dark here in North America, the satellites were in a spot that the sun was hitting them just right, causing us to see them here on the ground.  Fast moving satellites, they only stay in view for a short amount of time.  This often leads people to believe they are seeing some kind of alien spacecraft.

Earlier this spring, a woman in Foxboro saw a constellation of the Starlink satellites above her house.

Did you see anything strange in the skies above Augusta on Monday night?  Did it look like the Starlink satellites or do you think it was something else?  Let us know inside our app.