r/askastronomy 2d ago

What did I see? What might resemble a "drunk" satellite?

I was stargazing for maybe 20 minutes andnI saw 2 or 3 objects that resembled satellites, and were going at about the same speed, but were wobbling slightly instead of going perfectly straight. They also appeared to be speeding up and slowing down slightly. They had no blinking lights and appeared to stay the same size. I saw plenty of planes and satellites which were behaving normally during this time as well.

What could those have been?

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4

u/xikbdexhi6 2d ago

Probably someone's drones.

4

u/GXWT Astronomer🌌 1d ago

Everything is relative. You look up and see drunk satellites. The satellites look down and see a drunk telescope user

2

u/Waddensky 2d ago

A few birds, or possibly some form of autokinetic effect.

1

u/just4PAD 1d ago

Ive seen the auto kinetic effect with stars but didn't know it had a name lol thank you

I was wondering birds a bit, but wouldn't they look like they're changing size if they were birds bc of the wings flapping?

2

u/Fireandmoonlight 1d ago

Possibly large insects like moths lit up by streetlights.

1

u/NotTravisKelce 2d ago

They can’t be satellites. Any “wobble” you’d be able to see of an object maybe 20 ft wide 100+ miles up would actually be several miles of wobbling and that would take far too long for you to make it out.

1

u/shadowmib 1d ago

Probably birds but could be a drone or something like that. But those usually have lights like aircraft just smaller Birds they're really high up in the sky. Can still catch the sun rays after it's already dark on the ground and their feathers are actually fairly reflected so they can show up as bright lights in the sky

1

u/just4PAD 1d ago

How long after sunset? This was something like an hour or an hour and a half after sunset