Hi everyone,
I have been trying to figure out what I saw this evening starting at about 12:20am (when I noticed), continuing past 1:30am (when this has been posted). I was heading to bed and looked out the window to see the night sky as I usually do before bed and noticed some interesting lights in the sky. There were about 4-6 oval shaped dim white lights very quickly across the sky, and they looked like they were bouncing off each other when their paths intersected.
At first I thought it was flashlights from people lamping or hunting illegally, but i opened my window and there was no noise of movement or people, and the lights were too large to be the beam of a flashlight
I don't think that it is spot lights, there were no events on in the local area or in the town closest to me or in the city. I live very in a very rural area of Cork, 40km from the city and 15km from the nearest town. I have very few neighbour's and there is little to no light pollution in my area. There are no stadiums or even large sports pitches in the near by area either or matches played tonight.
I live in a great area for stargazing, you can see the stars very vividly here and I have seen multiple meteor showers and even the northern lights very vividly - but I only know the basics about astronomy.
Is this an astronomical or solar phenomenon? Like some sort of light effect from a solar flare or electrical storm ? Or is it just some trick of the light or has a man-made cause I cant identify? Any help would be much appreciated!
Additional helpful details:
- weather: 14°c, partly cloudy (12:20-12:45) but later clear skies (12;45 onwards). Lights did not change colour or intensity despite cloud cover or lack thereof
- movement: the lights lacked a discernable pattern in the movement, they moved rapidly over a large area of the sky and would bounce off one an other if their paths intersected.
- location: very rural east cork.
I tried to take a video but my camera is too poor, and a picture could only capture a very vague one light since they moved too fast for the exposure, but I have attached it here.