What’s that in the sky? WTOP has the answers

We’ve been receiving calls into the WTOP Newsroom reporting phenomena in the skies that people can’t explain — but our space expert can.

This pic and video show a SpaceX Starlink train of satellites shortly after they were launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Seeing this in the night sky can get our attention, but now you know what they look like. This is a large group but they can be smaller in number.(Courtesy Greg Redfern)

Night time sky gazers can see meteors — bright and dim, airplanes, aurora, stars, planets and oh, yes, satellites. Lots of them. Smartphone apps are available to track and identify these moving star-like objects of which there are currently over 11,000, with Starlink being a good chunk of the total.

When SpaceX launches a new group of its Starlink satellites check here— it is very likely that they will be spotted as a group, or “train” going across the sky. They can really grab our attention when they do.

If you see something like this you can go to this website and check.

Thankfully, WTOP’s space expert joined us live Sunday night to break it down.

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Greg Redfern tells WTOP what exactly is going on in the night sky. (WTOP)

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

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