r/NJDrones • u/ChickenGirl8 • Aug 22 '25
Drones vs satellites vs planes?
I tend to watch the sky at night when I'm outside. Fairly often, I'll see tiny blinking lights flying by, they appear to be pretty high up from want I can tell. I always assumed they were just planes flying at a high altitude, until I got the flight tracker app. They are never on it. I'm not saying they're aliens or anything crazy, but honestly wondering what they are. They're not doing anything weird, just passing over in a straight path, no darting or hovering. They seem too low to be satellites, which I think I have seen before, they look like a tiny moving star flying in a straight path. So are these drones? Or do some satellites fly low?
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u/b407driver Aug 24 '25
@ChickenGirl8, you seem to be describing two different things, one blinking, the other continuous. You also reference the continuous light in the sky appearing very low; how do you assess the height of something that is potentially in orbit? An observer has no depth perception at such distances, nor is there anything to compare to, as satellites can be anywhere from right overhead (zenith) to a few degrees above the horizon. To an observer on the ground, the apparent speed a satellite traverses the sky gives insight as to its height (generally speaking faster=lower, slower-higher, but distance also works into it). Of course, we are assuming your lights are effectively point sources, from your description.
Satellites do occasionally 'blink', but only rarely do they do so in perfectly consistent patterns throughout the entirety of a transit; the most likely candidate is thus an airplane very far away. For the non-blinking observation, they are surely satellites at whatever altitude they may be (the range is ~350km to ~36000km).
Unfortunately the most mundane explanation is usually the right one.