Formations of UAPs over West Texas captured on video.

 AMARILLO TEXAS.  - Steve Douglass 

Storm chaser, aviation and astro-photographer Wesley Luginbyhl set up his camera in hopes of catching the Persieds meteor shower which happens every year in Mid August. Instead, what he captured has yet to be identified. He witnessed and photographed what looks like an hour long show of formation after formation of UAPs appearing suddenly and traveling across the northern sky.

It was perfect viewing weather with unlimited visibility on the High Plains of Northwest Texas. Luginbyhl who lives in Amarillo often goes out and photographs the night sky. The wide open Texas expanse provides excellent views because of the high-altitude (from east to west, the High Plains rise in elevation from around 1,800 to 7,000 ft. (550 to 2,130 m with Amarillo at over 3,000 feet in altitude) and with few obstructions, limited light pollution and crystal clear skies. It is not uncommon to be able to see high-altitude aircraft flying over southern Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma or Nebraska.   

On any given night, satellite passes such as STARLINK trains and  the ISS (among others) are easy to spot because they stand out in stark contrast with the stars because of their motion.  Military and civil aircraft are easy to see too and identify from their green and red blinking navigation lights or bright anti-collision strobes. 

But what Luginbyhl captured does not look like anything he had ever seen before. The formations of lights were loose, appeared suddenly and kept coming.  The video embedded below was taken between 2:30 and 3:30 AM CDT with the camera facing NE.

According to Luginbyhl, "Honestly I  think it was much further to the north, over KS or NE probably. It started around 2:30am and lasted until around 3:30am in the NNE sky. I have been doing photography at night for 2 decades and have never seen anything like it."

In an attempt to identify the lights this blogger pulled his digital recordings of the aviation radio traffic that took place during the period. 

With my scanning array it is not uncommon to hear aircraft, both civil and military communications from 400 miles away, dependent on altitude.  I record hundreds of aviation frequencies, including regional air traffic control centers. 

After going through the recordings I heard no mentions of the lights by air traffic controllers or from anyone else flying in the area at the time. Many civil aircraft checked in with both Albuquerque and Kansas Center such as coast-to-coast FEDEX flights and red eye passenger carriers but no mention of the lights were recorded nor were there any communications from military aircraft. 

Possible explanations could be a very high altitude military aircraft drooping parachute flares but they seemed to travel east and a fairly decent rate of speed. 

It's possible they were  but not probable they were satellites but they don't travel in staggered formations. Meteors can be ruled out because of their lasting duration. 

One other possibility is that it was a Space X flight or other satellite payload launch but because the lights were observed emanating from the same part of the sky for more than an hour, that can be ruled out too. The only satellites that can appear to be stationary are those in geosynchronous orbits but they are over the equator. 

Another local photographer, Blake Brown (also out shooting meteor photographs) captured them as well from the town of Panhandle, Texas NE of Amarillo. I will post a link to that video soon. 

You can view more of Wesley Luginbyhl's sky photography HERE!