Debate rages after 'weird' string of lights seen in Queensland night sky
Residents in Cairns have been left scratching their heads by a series of bright lights shooting across the night sky.
“Anybody else see the weird string of lights come across the sky last night about 6:30 ?” a curious person asked in the Cairns Crimes and Alerts Facebook group on Saturday.
Baffled locals have responded and can’t believe what they saw on Friday night.
“My daughter ran in telling me Santa just passed us,” one person said.
“Have we been visited?” another person asked.
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The original poster described the strange sight as “like a string of about 20 fairy lights floating in a straight line towards the ocean.“
One quick thinking woman managed to capture the curious moment on film.
Monash University Physics and Astronomy Professor Michael Brown told Yahoo News that the lights in the video are a “starlink” and are the result of eccentric entrepreneur Elon Musk’s corporation, Space X.
The technology corporation launched 60 satellites into space last week.
Falcon 9 launches 60 Starlink satellites to orbit – targeting up to 6 Starlink launches this year and will accelerate our cadence next year to put ~720 satellites in orbit for continuous coverage of most populated areas on Earth pic.twitter.com/HF8bCI4JQD
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 24, 2019
For those who missed the startling sight, you’re in luck as Dr Brown said the starlink will orbit the globe “every 90 minutes or so” and “they will gradually disperse over the coming weeks,” he told Yahoo News.
Space X eventually plans to launch 12,000 more satellites and although Elon Musk claimed that the starlinks won’t be visible at night, the vision captured in Queensland proves they easily light up the sky.
If all of the planned satellites are launched Dr Brown estimated hundreds of them will be visible from earth “in the hours before sunrise and after sunset”.
“Astronomers are very worried these satellites could outnumber the number of stars one can see with the unaided eye,” Dr Brown said.
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