2017-09-27 - Sykesville, MD - Light

Two white lights observed from private airplane prior to dawn near Frederick MD

I am a pilot and aircraft owner. I had to go to Tennessee on Wednesday for a service call for work. I departed from my home airport at Essex, Maryland, at 6:30am, just prior to dawn in a clear, still morning. About 20 minutes into the flight, I was over Liberty Reservoir, headed toward Frederick, a couple of minutes before sunrise, and I saw two white lights hanging in the sky in the distance directly in front of me. Not unusual to see inbound or outbound air traffic for BWI or Dulles, I didn't think much of it.

I am aware the eye sometimes plays tricks on us, when it comes to airliners; sometimes they seem to be just floating in the air, while they're actually flying typically between 180 knots and 240 knots inbound or outbound. That's what these were doing, seemingly hanging still in the sky. Plain white lights. If I had to guess an altitude and distance, I would say 10-15 miles away at about 6,000 to 10,000 feet.

Then one of them started to move. Up and away toward the northwest very quickly, growing progressively fainter and fainter for about 15 seconds, before moving completely out of sight. About a minute later, the second one did exactly the same thing.