2015-11-11 - Athens, GA - Formation

Four dim lights move in formation across the sky, with no blinking, color, or sound

I was taking my dog out after getting in late from work. I'm a grad student at the University of Georgia in a physical science. I was looking at Orion and noticed 4 dim lights moving across the sky above Orion's head. The lights were dim (about as bright as the stars in Orion's sword or bow) but arranged like an equilateral triangle pointed in the direction of movement and the fourth light was on the left back side (if you extended the left triangle side back along the angle of the triangle's side). All lights were pretty equally spaced (except the fourth light from the far triangle's other vertex). No odd color or flashing seen. No sound. Overall size/spread comparable to the Pleiades.

They moved pretty fast in a ~330 degree heading. I tried to see if the shape would eclipse a star (to see if they were four lights on a single craft/plane) or if they were separated with nothing between the lights, but the lights didn't pass over any stars I could see. I lost it in the city glare about 10-20 seconds after spotting the lights, when it had covered about 1/4 of the sky.

It honestly looked very similar to a simple satellite crossing the sky, except there were four moving in motion together. I didn't notice any obvious individual light movement or change in relative position between the lights, but I think I saw a slight change in the relative positions due to perspective change as it flew farther to the northwest. No way to estimate altitude, although it was large enough that if it was a plane, it would've been low enough to hear probably.

If four satellites could be placed together and move together across the sky, that would look just like this. But I can't find evidence of that actually happening (plus that seems risky for satellites) and I've never seen that in years of looking at the sky.