'Mysterious' aerial object with flickering lights fly across Gujarat sky, expert responds

A skywatcher in Gujarat's Junagadh was left stunned this week after he witnessed a strange aerial object flying across the sky with a cluster of flickering lights. The sighting sparked discussion about whether it was a UFO as the trail of light slowly cruising into the night did not resemble that of an airplane or a military jet. The unique kind of flying craft created a shadow in the shape of a disc or a saucer that gave rise to the speculations if it was the Unidentified flying object (UFO).

Several the United States military pilots have reported similar “unusual sightings” and encounters, as they shot the footage from their fighter jets for evidence. The term the United States military forces use for this kind of mysterious aerial activity is "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP) instead of the more fiction-like ‘UFO’. 

"In the Saurashtra region, people sighted 30-40 mysterious lights blinking in a straight line. This caused curiosity and fear in people of the region due to blind beliefs. However, according to space science, such light sightings could be for three reasons. It could be either because a small portion of a meteoroid had entered the surface of the earth. It could also be a shooting star," Narottam Sahoo, Advisor at Gujarat Council of Science and Technology (GUJCOST) said, sharing the video shot by a Gujarat resident Fenish Ladani.

Quickly ruling out the possibility of an alien UFO, the advisor added, “But, this particular sighting looked like multiple lights in a row. This could be because of some satellite passing through the low earth orbit. There are more than 3000 satellites functional in the lower orbit of the earth.’ 

Furthermore, Sahoo explained that several such sightings have been reported in the US which turned out to be SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Starlink satellites, that provide high-speed broadband internet. 

Starlink satellites’ powerful brightness

Starlink satellites are launched in a massive cluster, sometimes up to 20 at a time as Musk aims to speed up his aim to take over the estimated $1 trillion worldwide internet connectivity market. US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted SpaceX permission to fly somewhere between 12,000 to 30,000 satellites, and they mostly orbit too low in the Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of 340 miles (550 km). Interestingly, according to EarthSky, these satellites travel together in the night sky in a group and are the size of the coffee table.

What is to be noted here is that despite Starlink satellites’ potential of high-speed internet in remote areas of the Earth, SpaceX has often been criticized for Starlink satellites’ very powerful brightness, which can be easily seen on the ground, plus they also disrupt astronomers’ observations of the night sky, according to National Science Foundation and the American Astronomical Society’s report released in August 2020. Experts at virtual Satellite Constellations 1 (SATCON1) also brought up the issue of the excessive brightness of Musk’s train of satellites, saying that it obstructs sky studies. The CEO stated in response that SpaceX will outfit the satellites with a blackened sunshade – called VisorSat in the near future.