NUFORC Sighting 176176

Occurred: 2023-05-06 22:10 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2023-06-10 06:45 Pacific
Duration: 1 minute

Location: West Seneca, NY, USA
Location details: Standing on the sidewalk on my street, looking west, out over Lake Erie

Shape: Other
Explanation: Starlink - Probable

3-4 Lights appearing in the sky, going directly upward in a perfectly straight line, before one would fade out and a new one appear.

On the night of May 6th, 2023, I was walking my dog some time shortly after 10 p.m., when I happened to look up through the budding branches of a tree in front of my neighbor’s house, and noticed that the stars in the sky seemed to be moving. I thought my head was spinning or something, so I pulled the dog over and away from the tree to get a better look, and I clearly saw the following: there were little lights that looked like stars fading into view, before traveling directly straight upward and fading out again. Three to four of them would be visible at a time; as the one on top was disappearing, a new one would be reappearing at the bottom. I estimate that I was looking into the sky at a 40 degree angle from the ground, and this lasted from about 30 seconds to a minute, before everything suddenly faded out before my eyes. Their movement was perfectly vertical and perfectly regular (same speed and same distance apart). Everything appeared and disappeared in the middle of the sky at the same level; there were no clouds to obscure my view if they might’ve been traveling up from the horizon, and I could clearly see many other stars around. Further up northward, I could clearly see Venus, still visible in the sky, which was extremely bright, and looking a ways to my left, further south, there was another star which was at a similar level to my eyes as Venus. The lights I saw appearing and disappearing occurred somewhat close to the right of that other star I just described (sorry, but I do not know which star that was), and I believe this would have been occurring directly out over Lake Erie, although I have no idea how close or far away they were other than to say that they seemed to me to be at a great distance (due to their consistent visible likeness with stars). But that is a guess.
I have tried to make sense of this in my mind, but in all my years of looking up at the sky, I have never seen anything resembling this, nor can I rationalize what normal phenomena it could have been. It was as if many spacecraft had lined up to leave the Earth’s atmosphere and were following each other in a perfect rhythm, traveling horizontally (fading in at the bottom) and then vertically before leaving. The other way I could describe it was as if there was a giant, narrow ferris wheel or disc turned vertically up and down in the sky, with lights on its edge, which was turning, causing the lights to appear and disappear; the lights disappearing on top had reached the summit of the wheel, faded out and disappeared behind the wheel, and reappeared at the bottom. This would explain the machine-like regularity of the movement, but I SAW NO OBJECT. I only saw lights. I must emphasize that these are only my best ways of describing what I saw; not claims as to what it actually was.

Posted 2023-07-10