I'm an airline pilot and saw this from the flight deck on two separate flights. Hoping someone can help identify it.

**Sighting 1**
- Date: 19 Oct 2026
- Video recorded: approx. 18:50 UTC (21:50 local)
- Flight: Mediterranean to northern Europe
- Position when filming: over the Aegean, between Rhodes and Thessaloniki
- Lights visible on and off from there until roughly over Austria
- Altitude: FL380 (38,000 ft / approx. 11,600 m)
- Viewing direction: approx. 280°, low above the horizon – roughly 20°, but hard to judge from the flight deck
- Duration: at least 2 hours, staying in the same direction and at the same height in the sky while we covered several hundred miles

**Sighting 2**
- Date: 23 Oct 2026, same route, around the same time
- Same direction and same position in the sky
- Seen by a different captain as well

**What we saw**
- Several small points of light at the same time
- Different colours: white, yellow, green, blue-white
- Different speeds from each other
- To the naked eye, individual lights seemed to speed up, slow down and change direction
- Lights appeared and disappeared
- No navigation lights or strobes

**What we ruled out on board**
- Reflections: cockpit lighting dimmed, visible from every seat position and angle, visible with the naked eye
- Aircraft: no position or anticollision lights
- Meteors: we saw several during the flight, and they looked completely different

Video: iPhone 16 Pro Max, 4K, handheld, 5x optical zoom, so any hand movement is magnified.

Could these be satellites in a sunlit window near the horizon, or is there another explanation? If anyone can check satellite passes for that time and position, I'd really appreciate it.

I heard today that Quasars are used in GPS that we use almost everyday. Seems like the satellite that try to point our location, would face inaccuracy because of difference in time between the satellite and our earth. Given the earth's rotation, which makes satellite hardtime pinning the location.

So ground stations look at distant Quasars which appear fixed to us(observers) and with respect to the Quasar we define our rotation and calculate our Earth's shifting surface. This precise location is inputted by the ground stations to the satellite, which then broadcasts the data to our phones with millimeter error margin.

I'd never in a million years even would have thought about this. I mean Quasar to our mobiles, everytime we open Maps, our location is calculated with Quasar 🤯

Maybe we take so many things for granted that we miss so much. Please share your facts and thoughts on how we use space objects day to day without noticing.

Hello, I'm a 21M and I've recently discovered a passion for Astronomy and Physics. I want to pursue these two things in a community college and then onto a full time college. From what I've heard you need to have a good high school GPA, that's where the problem comes in. I wasn't the greatest in school and didn't grow up too well so I skipped a lot and learned very little. My GPA is about .72 I believe. Do I have any hope of being able to pursue these things like this? I have my high school diploma just a terrible record.

In our daily lives, in chemical reactions, or within isolated laboratory settings, the total amount of mass-energy never changes.

However, the density of dark energy remains constant, even as space expands. This means that as space expands, new dark energy is generated alongside the newly created space; as the universe grows, the total amount of dark energy continuously increases.

So, what is the source of this energy?

Given that the energy of the universe is constantly increasing, its source cannot lie within the universe itself—it must reside outside of it.

Is it possible, then, to transfer energy into the universe from the outside?

Does such a source—existing beyond space-time, in a realm devoid of space and time— exist?

These are fairly edited photos I got in a Bortle 6 zone at around 2am I think.

(And no, I'm not trying to "show off" my photos/editing, I genuinely am just curious as to what might be in these photos).

After many years, I wanted to share this work with my professor colleagues. The universe consists of 3+2 dimensions, three latitudes x, y, and z, and a doubly symmetrical time dimension.

I know what you see here looks very simple, but the fascinating part is examining it in 5 dimensions and using Einstein's general theory of relativity.

At the center of the universe is the universe itself, but in this 2D image, the sun appears to be present.

I can provide detailed information to those interested; the most exciting part is that it explains all the unknowns about the universe.

So voyager 1 is currently traveling about 17km/s, and by my math that means it will travel a light year about every 17,650 years. So in a billion years, it will have gone about 56,660 light years assuming nothing obstructs it etc. I’ve heard that space is far emptier than you might even imagine, so I was wondering, do we have any estimate on the average distance you would need to travel in a perfectly straight line before a star would be directly in your path? Like, take a random line stretching 10 billion light years in any direction, do we have an estimate of how many stars that line would pass through? Of course it depends what the line passes through, galaxies, voids, etc, but I’m saying we have a line long enough to disregard that. That would give some idea of how long the spacecraft could go before colliding with a star. But I’m mostly curious about how many stars it would pass by, say within 1 AU. If you picked a random line, how many stars would you expect to pass by at a distance of 1 AU or less for every light year you travel? (A decimal of course) What I’m essentially curious about is how inconceivable is it that the Voyager 1 space craft would ever pass near a solar system suitable for civilization, but I’m also just curious about the frequency of stars in the universe as well.

I've been looking into meteor storms and I am realizing that I'm not making a connection here:

• Comet Temple-Tuttle has a 33-year period
• It leaves streams of meteoroids behind it
• The Earth passes through these streams of debris annually
• When the Earth passes through a younger stream, the meteor shower is more intense
• The Earth does not necessarily pass through each stream "in order;" rather, during intense meteor storm years, it tends to be passing through a stream that was deposited several periods ago

If the Earth is hitting these streams "out of order," why do we only pass through the dense ones on a 33-year cycle, instead of every year? For instance, we are going to pass through the 1899 meteoroid stream in 2034 -- how does this work? Are the meteoroid streams remaining fairly close to the comet itself or something, forming a cloud instead of a line?

For more problems like this one check the first comment!

I want to clarify that I know Hollywood defines a habitable planet as a planet that is habitable for us humans: Warm, comfortable, water and ability to grow food.

But after watching a documentary on Titan, I admit I'm a bit curious what the community considers a planet as habitable.

I suppose the root of my question would be "do you consider a planet that can have life habitable or a planet that can have human life only as habitable?"

Not trying to start a fight or anything, just curious.

Thanks.

Assume there's someone who's 28, has a bachelor's in business administration with a concentration in data analytics, and has spent the last few years working as a statistical analyst for a test development and assessment company, kind of like Pearson.

Also assume this person has been captivated by space and astronomy from a young age. They spend an almost obsessive amount of time consuming astronomy educational content, dedicate their free time to building up their math and astronomy knowledge, and are pretty dead-set on finding a way to participate in the field professionally, since time spent doing anything else feels hollow in comparison. The catch is that they still have student debt from their undergraduate degree at an expensive university, so they can't exactly afford to make reckless financial decisions.

What would you say the career prospects look like for someone in that position? How much is there a need for more astronomers in our world today? Is graduate school the most realistic path toward working in astronomy, and is it even feasible without an undergraduate degree in physics or astronomy? Can they find work in the field with their current data analytics skill set? What skills or coursework would you prioritize to make someone like this a viable candidate, if that's even possible? And should this person realistically consider pursuing astronomy as a career, or is it better left as a passion and hobby?

I would like to know what kinds of stars there are and more about them.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it'd be like a hurricane here on Earth, but ten times worse.

For more problems like this one check the first comment!

Does anyone know of any iOS apps that will use location and list in order the celestial objects that are most viewable given the location and current conditions etc?

Hi, I’m a first year university student who’s right now majoring in astronomy, but I’ve found I seriously don’t want to get a PhD, do any research or teach. I was wondering if there are any careers in astronomy that would only require a bachelor and are not me having to conduct my own research.

I’ve honestly not got a clue if this is the right place for this, but eh, just trying to see what answers anyone might have on this.

Have a lovely day everyone!