2012-09-29 - Seattle, WA - Light

[seattle] Chain of 8 equally spaced, fast moving constant orange lights over Cascades, Western Washington.

My location was on Queen Anne, near Fremont Bridge facing east over Lake Union, Lake Washington and the Cascades. Clear night, moon was approx 20deg up from horizon (google sky map "time travel" feature could give more accurate detail). Was about to mount my motorcycle, stopped, took helmet off and stood in driveway. First sighting was a fairly bright orange/somewhat red light passing visually just below the moon heading south. I tried to rationalize the sight, looking for a 'tail' of a comet, asteroid, blinking strobes of an airplane. Nothing made sense, no modulation of light, no strobes, no other color lights and it was nearly as bright and big as the red 'strobes' on the I5 bridge. Speed was about a palm width every two seconds.. also strangely fast. As soon as the light had traveled about 4 palm widths at arms length across the sky, another showed up on the same exact path, same speed, same brightness. My view of where the lights had o! riginated from was obscured by a large apartment building across the street. The original light continued on its path, followed by the other, quite a distance (maybe another four or five palm widths). By this time, with the exact same spacing and speed, another light had appeared just left and below the moon. There were three visible at this moment. The original light became dim, flickered and within a palm width distance was gone. I made a couple of phone calls, of which my neighbor answered and was walking down Dexter Ave and into the driveway at that moment. He and I watched a remaining four or five, as a total of 8 lights traveled the same path, the same speed and with the same exact spacing across the sky, flickering and disappearing at the same exactly spot in the sky (except the last one). The last light made a path, arcing visually 'higher' than the others and flickered out at the same timing/distance as the others. I wish I could have seen it from my bal! cony, as I'm sure by the intensity of light, and how mathemati! cally sp aced and accurate they appeared, they would have created a chain of lights throughout the horizon. I work in IT as a programmer, have been a military aircraft enthusiast since a very early age, and for whatever reason didn't think to use my phone for video.

To note: There were other aircraft in the sky throughout the sighting, commercial airliners and a small prop plane. I could hear the prop plane clearly, but nothing else out of the ordinary. Every airplane in the sky had distinct red/green/white strobes, and were of 'normal' speed. The flight path of commercial airliners normally fly west towards my apartment, then bank close enough that in most cases I can make out the branding/logo on the planes (in daylight). After this sighting, throughout the night all of the commercial airliners were making their turns towards seatac much further away (east) than usual.