What Is That Band of Lights in the Sky?

One evening, walking home, I looked up and saw a strange string of lights crossing the sky. It certainly wasn’t an airplane, and I doubted it was a procession of drones, since the lights were moving in a straight line at a constant speed. But what was it?

Given recent extraterrestrial events , one might immediately think of aliens. But it’s probably not aliens, right? “There must be a rational explanation for this,” I thought, even admiring how the lights quickly glided across the sky without deviating a single degree from the line. To be honest, it was a bit creepy, although I was pretty sure it wasn’t aliens.

I bet my experience is similar to that of many of us who have seen similar garlands of lights criss-crossing the night sky. Unlike “aliens” sightings, these lights have been seen by many people, but fortunately there is indeed a rational and easily accessible explanation for them.

The string of lights in the sky is Elon Musk’s Starlink.

So no, it’s not aliens. This is the Internet! Those lights that you see in the sky, moving in such a uniform way, do it the way it was intended by the team of people from SpaceX. In particular, they are created by satellites, and their fleet has more than 4500 pieces . (There are many satellites, so you can see them in the sky from time to time.)

Starlink offers its customers satellite Internet at speeds close to broadband , with download speeds from 25 to 220 Mbps and upload speeds from 5 to 20 Mbps. The premium service offers speeds up to 500 Mbps. This is made possible by the small size of the satellites, which means they can orbit the Earth at a much closer range than traditional satellites, hovering about 300 miles above our heads .

You can connect to Starlink Internet for a fee.

Starlink is not a corporate or government internet service. The company offers satellite internet to customers at compatible locations and continues to expand its services.

If you’re in a serviced area, Starlink will set you back $110 per month . Depending on how much you pay for internet service, it might be a bit pricey or it might be a discount. However, you will need to pay an initial fee of $599 for a Starlink branded satellite dish and Wi-Fi router. And if you want to upgrade to Starlink Premium , it will cost $500 per month with a $2,500 down payment.

You may not be convinced to use Starlink if you are in an area with excellent internet coverage. If you have fiber internet, you have potential speeds that will overwhelm even Starlink Premium. However, Starlink really shines in areas with average to poor internet service. It doesn’t matter if there’s one terrible ISP in your area charging you crazy amounts for terrible internet, as long as you have access to clear skies, you can take advantage of fast satellite internet via Starlink.

How to Track Starlink Satellites

If you want to know when the next time this chain of lights will be visible in your forest, the best thing to do is to turn to the Starlink tracker. Find Starlink is one such site ; with it, you can specify your city and country and see if Starlink satellites are traveling overhead anytime soon. Unfortunately, it is quite possible that my sighting will be the last one for a while, as there does not seem to be any crossing in my area for the next five days.

If you’d rather see where Starlink would generally be, you can also check out Find Starlink’s live map .