What is the line of lights in the sky?

Almost certainly a Starlink train — a recently launched batch of satellites still clustered along the same orbit, reflecting sunlight. They appear as evenly spaced, steady, silent points following each other across the sky.

How long after a launch can you see the Starlink train?

The tight, obvious train lasts about three to five days. A looser chain remains recognisable for a week or two. After roughly a month the satellites have dispersed into their operational shell and the effect is gone.

Why do the satellites in the train disappear one by one?

They are crossing into Earth's shadow. Because they follow the same orbital path, they all reach the shadow boundary at the same point in the sky and wink out in sequence. The satellites are unaffected — they have simply stopped catching sunlight.

Which direction does the Starlink train travel?

Typically roughly west to east, following the orbit's ground track. The exact path depends on the orbital inclination of that particular launch, which is why pass predictions for your specific location are more useful than a general rule.

The Starlink Train: What It Is and How to See One

A line of evenly spaced lights gliding silently across the sky is the single most reported UFO sighting of the past few years. It is a Starlink launch, a few days old, on its way up — and the effect only lasts a week or two before the satellites spread out and stop looking like anything.

Updated 20 August 2026 · 5 min read

If you have ever seen twenty or thirty steady lights crossing the sky in single file, evenly spaced, moving together and completely silent, you saw a Starlink train. It is startling the first time, which is why it generates so many reports.

Why the satellites are in a line

A Falcon 9 carries a stack of Starlink satellites packed flat, like a deck of cards. About fifteen minutes after liftoff the stack is released as a group into a low parking orbit — much lower than their eventual operating altitude, typically a few hundred kilometres up.

They separate gently, with very little relative velocity, so immediately after deployment they are all in nearly the same orbit at nearly the same speed. Over the following hours small differences cause them to spread out along that shared path — but along it, not away from it. The result is a string of satellites following each other around the same track.

From the ground, that string looks exactly like what it is: a line of lights, evenly spaced, tracing the same route across the sky one after another.

Why the train is so bright

Two reasons compound. The first is altitude. A newly deployed batch sits at a few hundred kilometres, well below the roughly 550 km operational shells. Closer means brighter, and the difference is substantial.

The second is orientation. During the early phase satellites fly in a low-drag configuration and have not yet settled into the operational attitude that SpaceX's brightness mitigations are designed around. The sunshades and mirror films that make an operational Starlink satellite hard to spot are much less effective before the satellite is oriented for normal service.

Put together: the train is visible from ordinary suburban skies, and often visible from cities. An operational satellite frequently is not.

The train is the same hardware you cannot see a month later. It is bright because it is low and not yet in its operating attitude — not because it is different hardware.

How long the effect lasts

Not long. Each satellite runs health checks, unfolds its solar array and starts a slow climb to its assigned shell using an ion thruster. Ion thrusters produce tiny amounts of thrust very efficiently, so the climb takes weeks rather than minutes.

Because each satellite is targeted at a slightly different final position, they climb at slightly different rates and drift apart along the orbit. The tight, obvious line survives a few days. A looser, longer chain of separated points remains visible for a week or two. After roughly a month the satellites are distributed around the orbital plane and there is no train left to see.

Day 0 — deployment into a low parking orbit, satellites tightly clustered
Days 1–5 — the classic tight train: brightest and most obvious, best time to look
Days 5–20 — a stretched chain of separated lights, still recognisable
After roughly a month — dispersed into the operational shell, no longer a train

How to catch one

Trains are time-limited, so the sequence is: find out when a launch happened, then look during the first few nights afterwards.

The launches page on this site lists recent and upcoming Starlink missions with dates. A launch within the last three to five days is your target — after that the effect degrades quickly.

Then apply the ordinary visibility rules. You still need twilight: satellite in sunlight, you in darkness, roughly one to two hours after sunset or before sunrise. A train passing at midnight is in Earth's shadow and invisible, no matter how recently it launched.

Face a broad section of sky with an unobstructed horizon and wait. Trains typically travel roughly west to east. Once the first light appears, the rest follow along the identical path — which is the moment it stops looking like anything ambiguous.

Why the train fades away partway across

A common experience: the train appears, tracks beautifully across half the sky, and then the satellites wink out one after another in the same spot.

That spot is the edge of Earth's shadow. The satellites have flown out of sunlight, and because they are all on the same path they cross that boundary at the same place, in sequence. Nothing has happened to them — you have simply watched them enter night.

It is one of the better demonstrations of orbital geometry available to the naked eye, and it happens on almost every twilight train pass.

Photographing a train

A phone on a fixed support with a long exposure will record a train as a series of parallel streaks. Anything that holds the camera still works — a tripod, a wall, a bag on the ground.

Exposures of ten to twenty seconds capture a good length of track without the sky washing out. If your camera allows manual settings, a fast lens and a moderately high ISO help; the satellites are moving fast enough that longer exposures make longer trails rather than brighter points.

Start the exposure slightly before the first satellite enters frame, since the interesting part is the sequence rather than any single object.

Frequently asked questions

What is the line of lights in the sky?: Almost certainly a Starlink train — a recently launched batch of satellites still clustered along the same orbit, reflecting sunlight. They appear as evenly spaced, steady, silent points following each other across the sky.
How long after a launch can you see the Starlink train?: The tight, obvious train lasts about three to five days. A looser chain remains recognisable for a week or two. After roughly a month the satellites have dispersed into their operational shell and the effect is gone.
Why do the satellites in the train disappear one by one?: They are crossing into Earth's shadow. Because they follow the same orbital path, they all reach the shadow boundary at the same point in the sky and wink out in sequence. The satellites are unaffected — they have simply stopped catching sunlight.
Which direction does the Starlink train travel?: Typically roughly west to east, following the orbit's ground track. The exact path depends on the orbital inclination of that particular launch, which is why pass predictions for your specific location are more useful than a general rule.