Holy Aces of Bases, Batman - WHAT'S THAT IN THE SKY?!

I was all excited last Thursday morning because I knew the Panoptica.ai pop-up was only a few hours away and - we’ve been working on stuff behind the scenes for a while, so I was just really excited to start sharing it.

I went out of the house around 5:30am for the morning dog walk, and as me and the pups came over the hill at the end of our block and started working our way down, my eyes went WIDE because I saw this (which, I somehow captured):

I even caught a video too (you can see it here).

I’m into the universe winking at me. I like a little, “I know what this means, or at least what this reminds me of” nudge.

This was a WTF is in the sky over me moment.

I showed the video. I asked friends. I got all sorts of confused, shocked, and probing questions.

No answers though. Nobody knew what I saw. AI couldn’t even decide.

All I knew was that my picture and video didn’t capture just how big the tail on that pin prick of light I saw was. It was big enough that it had to be close, but far enough that I heard no noise.

So I pretty quickly ruled out meteor and got pretty confident it wasn’t a fireball.

I really thought it was a rocket. But nobody is launching rockets anywhere near northeastern PA. And this was definitely no drone.

Poking around on Perplexity with the date, time, and images, combined with all sorts of follow-ups about nearby rocket launches and other questions, I figured it out.

Cracked the case.

Still didn’t believe it, but I had a viable explanation.

Apparently, a SpaceX Starlink mission launched at 5:30am in Florida. I just so happened to be looking at the exact right point in the sky at about 5:38am. In Pennsylvania.

So I asked Claude to help me figure out the timeline, and (sonic) boom - at exactly 5:38 AM, that SpaceX booster was doing its "landing burn" on its way back to a droneship in the Atlantic. The SpaceX site had the complete timeline. The whole mystery was no mystery at all.

I’m still processing this though. A booster launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and was on its way back to land on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean, a cool 900ish miles from me, and I saw it.

The future does not ask you for permission. It doesn’t care if you’re in a city or suburbia. It just shows up, does its thing, and lets you figure out what you’re going to do with it.

Not only did I have no (re: ZERO) clue it was happening, me and my dogs caught it live, by complete accident and coincidence.

I saw the sign.

Future is amazing.

Stuff happens far beyond your launch, and you never know who you’ll inspire (or confuse) with your cool stuff.

ps. five hours drive-time due west of me, in Pittsburgh, I found this - much better than my shaky dog walk cam!