r/satellites

Saw something unusual tonight around 10:03–10:04 PM from southwestern New Hampshire (approx. 43 N, -72 W, elevation ~1000 ft, sighting was 90* east of my location, moving in a North to South orbit at about 60-70* elevation.

A minute before, we were photographing the crescent moon with earthshine and Venus low in the west/northwest. Sky conditions were extremely clear and dark. The object appeared separately in the eastern sky.

At first glance it looked like a very faint grayish “scratch” or hairline in the sky (about 1.5 inches between my pointer and thumb if I held it up to measure) moving steadily from north to south (slightly east of overhead). It was NOT bright like a meteor and had no blinking aircraft lights. Motion was smooth and orbital-looking. It took about 1.5-2 minutes to leave our view over the horizon when we captured it

Important details:

• Visible to naked eye, though very faint
• Looked continuous, not like separate dots - ribbon like.
• Long and thin — roughly finger-width at arm’s length
• Maintained coherent shape while moving
• Slight waviness/brightness variation along its length
• No sudden maneuvers, acceleration, sound, or flashing
• Appeared much dimmer in person than in photos
• Very high altitude - we have plenty of reference satellites around us at all times. This was much higher than I've ever seen a moving orbital object in space.

The photos exaggerate brightness due to phone exposure, but the actual shape/appearance was fairly accurate. it was pure luck we saw it, it was such a faint, small scratch in the sky.

What makes this strange to me:

• It did NOT resemble a normal satellite point
• Did NOT resemble a typical Starlink “string of pearls” at all, of which milllions of pictures exist.
• Looked more like a continuous luminous filament or elongated object - ribbon like

Some possibilities I’ve considered:

• unresolved satellite train
• classified orbital hardware
• elongated debris/tether
• sunlit rocket vent/plume edge
• unusual reflection geometry

But I haven’t found a conventional explanation that cleanly matches the continuous “scratch in the sky” appearance.

Curious whether anyone else saw this tonight or can identify it? I had no luck on 4chan and Gemini and Chat GPT could only speculate.

But again, before you all cry Starlink - this was far too high, faint, and ribbon-like. no points of light. also not a meteor - it had no pluming or trail and was too slow. it retained its shape and ribbon like appearance while as long as we could see it. and those photos were taken with three different phone lenses over about 90 seconds. the blackest background one (default) is the most accurate to life, except far dimmer, and a hairline ribbon like gray scratch in the sky, only about an inch and a half in appearance from the ground.

thanks friends

EDIT: here are some control pictures I took after the event last night of the same area of sky with the same camera. https://imgur.com/a/gdfcWCx

**UPDATE:** There was a starlink array that would have passed near me shortly before that time, but it would have been only 10* from the horizon (disguised by the hills) and heading northwest to west, the wrong direction. (and yes I'm certain of my orientation). Here is a comparison of the starlink trajectory vs. what I observed. Totally different trajectory. Plus, this was still much higher than any satellite that I've ever observed, not to mention the ribbon-like appearance

https://imgur.com/a/p8AHUMl

I'm not saying it wasn't a satellite array, or that it's extraterrestrial, what im saying is we have no confirmation of an object or array moving in that orientation at that time. It still remains UNSOLVED.

I wanted one place to see everything happening in space right now — so I built it. Space Monitor pulls live data from 14 sources into a single mission control dashboard: ISS position updated every 10 seconds, real solar flare alerts from NOAA SWPC GOES, Voyager 1 & 2 distances from JPL Horizons, Deep Space Network dish status so you can see which spacecraft NASA is talking to right now, today's Astronomy Picture of the Day, Mars weather from Curiosity REMS, latest Perseverance raw images, upcoming rocket launches, near-Earth asteroids this week, and the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

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There's also an AI co-pilot you can ask things like "Why is Venus hotter than Mercury?" or "Quiz me about Saturn" — it pulls live data to answer.

GitHub Repo · Live App

I’m building a browser-based satellite tracking platform where SGP4 runs on the GPU.

WebGPU + WGSL. Full active catalog propagation client-side, with interactive time scrubbing and every frame SGP4-propagated.

Includes live orbits, ground tracks, sensor footprints, CDMs, reentries, GEO congestion, regime shell health, orbital density, watchlists, maneuver detection, and more.

Still a WIP. I’d love feedback.

Live:
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My friend took a picture of the comet on saturday and was dismayed at the pollution from satellite trails. I made lemonade out of lemons and improved the photo simulator web page managed to match them all with a high accuracy degree.

This was a 10 degree horizontal sky view and a 30 second duration shot with a Nikon d7 a 200mm lens and an equatorial mount on his tripod. The damage was 1 russian, 2 chinese and 4 starlinks..

Since the comet was in the west, and the sun had set there but it was 7:20pm it was maximum satellite reflectivity hour.

​

Ok. So I'm on record as saying I didn't expect much in the way of Q1 earnings and that's pretty much what happened.

But there's some jewels here I want to tease out and comment on. So let's get started

**1. Multi-phase pathway.**

At least twice in the press release it's mentioned that they they have multiple phases with one of the largest satellite communications providers for "next generation equipment". This is a key tell of just how large the platform reference agreement is. Translating n: This isn't a year or two on one product. This is a comprehensive, multi-phased build out that will see GCTS tech used in all these services and products. GCTS is the chip at the center of all this. I've previously speculated that this is Amazonstar. If it is, the one possible product line is Amazon LEO Nano ( aka..the next generation of LEO!! ). Now just sit back for a moment and think about the scale that Amazon can deliver in terms of volume orders. Undoubtedly, if it is Amazon, and it is Leo Nano...then they will market, distribute it and service it via Amazon's preeminent ecommerce platform. It's not unreasonable to think Amazon could scale sales, usage of Leo Nano to 100s of millions of several years. That's just ONE phase. Am I speculating? Yes. But I'm using logic, reason and research. You be the judge.

2. Ramp in R&D in Q3. Why is that good?

A quietly understand question from one analyst uncovered that R&D spending will increase measurably in Q3 2026. So why would that be good? After all that subtracts from earnings doesn't it? The key here is timing. Follow my logic. Amazon is under pressure from the FCC to launch 1000+ satellites by July 2026. The FCC has granted them KU/Ka band spectrum for satellite broadband ( this is same spectrum band that Starlink uses, although their frequencies are different ). If they don't start using that spectrum, then the FCC has threatened to take it away and hand it over to arch nemesis: SpaceX. So Amazon is in a hurry. You can see this through their satellite launches. You can see them signing launch contracts with basically anyone who has a rocket. Including SpaceX!! Bezos will get it done. And after he gets the sats up, the FCC will want to see him USING the spectrum. It's not enough to launch satellites. So in Q3,Q4 of 2026...Amazon LEO Nano rollouts need to commence at full blast right after the last sat is orbiting. This is where the R&D expenses come in during Q3. My guess is that these expenses will be GCTS engineers working on that rollout with Amazonstar. It should be noted that the KU/Ka band spectrum is not the same as the band 53 tERRESTRIAL and NTn spectrum acquired with Globalstar. This latter spectrum sits in the L,C,and S bands. It's not in danger of being take away because Apple is using a big (80%) chunk of the NTN portion today on Globalstar 's satellites. That being said anothe pressure point for Amazon and the need for spending on engineering with GCTS might be to integrate band 53 terrestrial and non-terrestrial across their warehouses, drones and logistics fleet for tracking and supply chain. This would be another "multi-phased" pathway.

3. How big is this?

It was said on the call and it's obvious from the jump in revenue that 5G chip deployments have ramped. Analysts weren't too bothered by (.15) loss because the ramp here becomes profitable in 2027. However, I don't think these analysts truly understand the sheer scale of what might be happening. During Q4 the satellite customer orders were mentioned as "low millions" annually. But if this really is Amazon and they really push Leo Nano, it could grow to 10s of millions annually quickly. This doesn't even include the warehouse/logistics pathway, or any other future planned service/product ( Alexa, Prometheus, etc ).

4. GCTS too critical to leave as a separate company.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that all this leaves GCTS as wayyyyy too valuable to leave as an independent entity. Amazon, if that's the satcom company, has a history of vertical integration if it fits their stratrgic direction. Well..it doesn't get more strategic that providing the reference platform technology stack for all your OEM/OED suppliers. GCTS has the very chip and patents that would provide comms across all products and services for this satcom company. How much is that worth? $1B $5? Globalstar was bought out for $11.5B

The last thing I'll note is that the CFO mentioned that 5 to 7 customers are ordering their chips. I think this is a really important clue to GCT Semi's future. After all, the company's financials are ...well..not so hot. These other customers surely know this. But yet they agreed to work with GCT anyway. Why? Well ..it's anyone's guess, but I believe these customers know that in a few years GCT will be in much better position. Even if it's gets purchases, that too may benefit these customers as they could then find themselves in partnership with one of the "largest satellite communications companies". Gogo would certainly make a nice new product line within Amazon's competing service to Starlink.

Earnings announcement: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260512443937/en/GCT-Semiconductor-Holding-Inc.-Provides-Business-Update-and-Reports-First-Quarter-2026-Financial-Results

Earnings Call transcript: https://www.benzinga.com/insights/news/26/05/52509027/full-transcript-gct-semiconductor-hldgs-q1-2026-earnings-call

8K: https://s3.amazonaws.com/sec.irpass.cc/2932/0000929638-26-001816.htm

10Q: https://s3.amazonaws.com/sec.irpass.cc/2932/0001193125-26-219536.htm

Hey guys, l've been workin on something new to track logistical activity near military bases and other hubs. The core problem is that Google maps isn't updated that frequently even with sub meter res and other map providers such as maxar are costly for osint analysts.

But there's a solution. Drish detects moving vehicles on highways using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.

The trick is physics. Sentinel-2 captures its red, green, and blue bands about 1 second apart.
Everything stationary looks normal. But a truck doing 80km/h shifts about 22 meters between those captures, which creates this very specific blue-green-red spectral smear across a few pixels. The tool finds those smears automatically, counts them, estimates speed and heading for each one, and builds volume trends over months.

It runs locally as a FastAPl app with a full browser dashboard. All open source. Uses the trained random forest model from the Fisser et al 2022 paper in Remote Sensing of Environment, which is the peer reviewed science behind the detection method.

GitHub: https://github.com/sparkyniner/DRISH-X-
Satellite-powered-freight-intelligence-