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Home / New Zealand

String of UFOs - or Elon Musk's SpaceX Starlink satellites - spotted in Auckland night sky

NZ Herald
29 Jan, 2022 06:40 PM2 mins to read

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The unidentified string of lights seen from Great Barrier Island on Saturday night. Photo / Jack Young.

The unidentified string of lights seen from Great Barrier Island on Saturday night. Photo / Jack Young.

Are they UFOs flying over Auckland or Elon Musk's SpaceX Starlink satellites?

Aucklander Visha Chand sent the Herald images and video he took of the string of bright lights in the night skies he saw last night.

"Shown in the night sky over Auckland on 29 Jan 2022 around 10pm," Chand said.

"Just wondering if anyone else saw it?"

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Jody Trewheela said she witnessed the string of lights for almost 10 minutes.

"The unidentified flying objects I saw above me was when me and my partner were driving in Onehunga when we saw a group of woman standing in a group pointing and staring at the sky so I assumed something spectacular was in the sky," she said.

String of bright lights over Auckland last night. Photo / Visha Chand
String of bright lights over Auckland last night. Photo / Visha Chand

"Driving up Onehunga mall road, I stuck my head out the window and that's where I saw this enormous cigar shaped craft with so many lights blinking."

Trewheela said she stood there for about five minutes until the tail end of it.

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"The object did not appear to have any sound and has to be at least a kilometre in length," she said.

She recorded a three-minute video of her encounter but said the video was affected by the brightness of the street lights.

A person told the Herald: "Camping at Raglan and there's 27 flowing lights in an arc going through the sky. All in the same direction. Never seen anything like it before".

Earlier this month, similar images also likely to belong to Elon Musk's space venture were shared by night owl Northlanders.

Seen in the night skies over Auckland on Saturday night. Photo / Visha Chand
Seen in the night skies over Auckland on Saturday night. Photo / Visha Chand

Images and video from residents in Dargaville and Warkworth showed an ordered line of bright lights in the night sky.

On January 7, Space.com reported the launch of SpaceX's first Falcon 9 rocket of the year, sending a new stack of Starlink satellites into orbit from Florida in the United States.

Starlink has launched several chains of up to 60 satellites in recent years, offering broadband from above via the network of low-Earth orbiting satellites.

In May last year, the Herald reported a "mysterious string of lights" spotted in the sky above Auckland which later turned out to be Musk's satellites.

These satellites have been spotted with the naked eye travelling over New Zealand previously, including sightings last March.

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