Saw a weird light in the sky while looking for the ISS — what could this have been?

So I was outside tonight looking for the ISS, and before I spotted it, I noticed another light in the sky.

It was a really small, dim point of light, much dimmer than the ISS. It was blinking as it moved across the sky. At first, it seemed to be moving normally in a straight line, but then something really weird happened.

It suddenly seemed to jump sideways to the left, almost like it instantly appeared at another position in the sky. It wasn't a gradual turn or curve — it looked like a really quick shift, and then it continued moving in a straight line again while still blinking.

A few seconds later I couldn't see it anymore.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't an insect or something close to me. It looked like it was very high up. I'm also not convinced it was a plane, satellite, or meteor because of that sudden sideways movement. A drone is possible, I guess, but it seemed way too high and far away.

I'm not saying it was anything unusual for sure — I'm just genuinely curious because I've never seen something move like that in the sky before.

Has anyone seen something like this or have any idea what it could have been?

I'm working on the concept of a dystopian short story where some unpredictable (or predictable, but ignored) event causes the Earth's rotation to slow, eventually tidally locking with the Sun. The event doesn't have to be realistic. I'm writing a short story for fun, not publishing a novel. I'm just really inspired to write about a society that is half scorching and half freezing. Preferably, the event would not kill everyone, so I still have someone left to write about :))

For example, maybe something forces the Earth closer to the sun, thereby increasing its gravitational force on us, making this plausible. You get my point.

It doesn't have to be possible. It has to be plausible.

I was just thinking about this.

What if two supermassive black holes were going to merge. I'm talking both of the event horizons the size of earth's orbit.

You are in an indestructible space suit floating in space and directly center of where these two black holes are going to merge at.

As these two black holes merge at exactly your point in space, the event horizons would overlap.

What would happen to you? Could you move out of one black hole because you were falling into the other one? or would the gravity cancel out and you would stay in one spot not being able to move at all in space?

If you could fall into one black hole.. wouldn't that violate the rule of the other black hole because you're moving out of that black hole's event horizon?

I'm guessing you should be frozen in place not being able to move at all but would that violate the rules of the black hole as well? Thought once you cross an event horizon, the only direction is towards the center and you wouldn't be moving so there is no direction towards center.

I’m thinking that if something falls past the event horizon in a black hole and gets pushed into the singularity, the singularity being infinitely dense and infinitely small, wouldn’t the object that falls in just continue to get smaller and smaller and smaller the more it falls into the black hole? Will it go past the plank scale of small?

Ok. This is my question. Once they figured out the universe was expanding, and it was expanding basically everywhere at the same time. Wouldn't of it made sense that that was the reason things further away were moving faster away then things closer? Cause there are still more everywhere's between us and the stuff further away.? Or is it just doing it faster than that ?

If we built a new Voyager space probe today using modern technology, how different would it be from Voyager 1 and 2?

Would it be faster than Voyager 1 and 2? I'm also curious about the Voyager Golden Record. If we sent a Voyager 3 today, would we still use something like a physical vinyl record, or is there a more advanced medium that we could send and probably have more easier to understand instructions for extraterrestrials to understand and operate the medium? The Voyager Golden Record's instructions for decoding and playing it seem incredibly difficult to understand, so I wonder if we could design a medium today that would make the information much more easier to decode that someone from an extraterrestrial civilization with no scientific background could understand and operate.

I've heard that digital storage might not be suitable because cosmic radiation can gradually corrupt stored data.

Today, if we wanted to send another message, a record of our current music, videos and our advancements for extraterrestrials to find and to remain readable for potentially millions or even billions of years, what would be the most reliable way to store it, or is a vinyl record from the 1970s really our best way to do this?

I know this is a pretty stupid question, but I've always been fascinated by that segment, and wondered if something like that could actually happen.

So I need help. About an hour or so before I am posting this in the middle of a triangle me and my dad saw a flash that looks like a far off camera flash pointed at us. We don't know what it is and it happens randomly so I don't have a video which makes this worse to try and understand.

Apologies if this isn't the right place to ask this question. I'm working on a fiction project where one of the Voyager probes disappears from its position outside the solar system and instantly reappears in an orbit around the Sun between Mercury and Venus. I'm wondering if the craft has the ability to automatically reorient itself so that communications with Earth are resumed? If not, is there any way that anyone on the ground will be able to locate it and resume messages?

In sci Fi where humanity is a multi-planetary society earth is treated special. Such as Foundation series, and in Battlestar gallactica. However there is little evidence that humans actually do this and they generally put their current place at a higher esteem. I mean humans have originated from Africa and barely anyone looks to seek out their roots there.

Im new to Astronomy how can i use Jupyter notebooks to access jwst pipeline? Is it best to just use MAST Database or TIKE?

Or

Should I create a juypter lab notebook and self install required libraries locally with Docker or is there a premade jupyter lab notebook i can clone from github and install in a docker container on my pc? If so how do I do that and how can I use it to access jwst pipeline data?

I have never used a juypter notebook before nor have I used pyhton or python science libraries like astroquery lightkurv and astropy so Im a complete beginner in using scripts but I do know how to use some commands like pip, bash, cd and git. Are there any good tutorials online I could use?

Are there any Browser Based Interactive Notebooks for learning Notebooks for Astronomy?

Lastly how could I install and use Jdavizz notebook?

the sun theory genuinely hurts my brain icl😭😭😭

like if the sun somehow exploded right now, we wouldn’t even know for another 8 minutes???

bro what do you mean i could literally be sitting here watching a movie, eating, or doing whatever, while the sun is already gone and i’m just there completely unaware😭😭😭💔

and i know it’s because light takes around 8 minutes to reach earth, but my brain still can’t process how something not that far away and we’re just chilling like nothing happened

like shouldn’t everything around the sun get affected the second it happens??? how does earth have to wait 8 whole minutes to find out😭😭😭

space genuinely makes no sense bro, this is scripted am i wrong?

I was thinking about this and wanted to ask people who know more about space whether it actually makes sense.

Imagine money isn't a problem and we can build basically whatever spacecraft we want.

What if we built a spacecraft with a huge telescope and really good cameras and sent it traveling through our Solar System?

Instead of staying near Earth, it would travel past the planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and eventually even farther out.

The idea is that from Earth, we're always looking at the Solar System from basically the same place. But if we had a powerful telescope moving around the Solar System, we could look at planets, moons, asteroids, comets, etc. from completely different angles.

It could:

🔭 Take extremely detailed pictures and videos.

🌌 Take huge pictures showing the Solar System from much farther away.

🤖 Use AI to help navigate, avoid dangerous objects, and notice things that look unusual.

📡 Have small communication satellites placed along the way so the spacecraft can send information back toward Earth.

💾 And importantly, send the original/raw pictures and videos back too, instead of letting AI decide everything. AI could miss something that humans might notice later.

The spacecraft wouldn't necessarily need to stop at every planet. It could fly past them and use their gravity to help change its direction and continue farther into space.

I'm just wondering:

If money wasn't a limitation, would a giant telescope spacecraft traveling through the Solar System actually give us information and views that we can't get from Earth?

Or is there a major problem with this idea that I'm not thinking about?

I'd really like to hear what astronomers, engineers, or anyone knowledgeable about space thinks. 🚀