'It made me freak out': Hawke's Bay stargazers catch glimpse of satellite train

Brooke Ngaia lives in the country along the Napier/ Taupo Rd and was one of many that had no idea about the satellites leaving her a little freaked out over what she saw. Photo / Brooke Ngaia

Some Hawke's Bay stargazers enjoyed a near-perfect night to see US space entrepreneur Elon Musk's lights make another visit to the skies over New Zealand.

The American company SpaceX's satellites triggered a flurry of excitement on local social media when they were first seen over New Zealand skies in February.

People reported seeing an "extremely odd" string of 30 to 40 lights crossing the night sky in a straight line from east to west, with some speculating they were UFOs.

In Waipukurau, Tracey Maree said she had been trying to spot the cluster of satellites for some time, and was in the right place at the right time on Friday night.

"We have been trying to see it for a while so we're pretty excited to finally spot them."

Others had a bit of a different reaction as they didn't know about the billionaire's satellites and were left curious as to what the lights were.

Brooke Ngaia lives in the country along the Napier/Taupo Rd and was one of many who had no idea about the satellites, leaving her a little freaked out over what she saw.

"It made me freak out for a little while and with everything that is going on in the world at the moment I was not sure what I was looking at," she said.

"I only saw it for about 30 seconds then it went away, it looked like a train of lights moving fast."

SpaceX had by February 1 launched 240 satellites but has plans for an initial constellation of 12,000, and reportedly eventually wants 42,000 orbiting the earth.