“Does anyone know what this light could be?” hockey player Max Talbot wrote on social media late Friday night. Attached is a grainy image of the flying figure – a line of light moving rapidly across the night sky. “Saw it in Lac St-Jean,” wrote one commenter, one of several reporting sightings near Montreal. “Saw the same thing from Terrebonne,” wrote another. Along with similar grainy images, several others chimed in online with theories behind the nocturnal anomaly, joking that aliens were leading the way. Other comparisons ranged from classic arcade games to Darth Vadar’s lightsaber. But what was it, really? According to space columnist Andrew Fazekas — AKA the Night Sky Guy — the likely answer is that the line of light is made up of several satellites launched by US space company SpaceX. “Basically, what we’re seeing is a chain of them. Remember, I think there were 53 satellites that were launched simultaneously on this rocket. And so once they’re released into space, they’re still clustered together,” he said. CTV News. “They take up to a month to separate and get into their proper orbits.” From the ground, the satellites likely took on the appearance of a straight line because they were so far away, Fazekas speculated. “It appears to the human eye as a single line traveling across the sky.” Findstarlink.com, a website that tracks satellite locations reported that Starlink 55 will be visible in the Montreal area on Friday night. SpaceX launched several dozen modules on Friday afternoon.
