Description

So when I took these pictures I wasn’t seeing anything unusual in the skies at that point. The same stars are visible in all the photos with varying degrees of visibility due to the focus and exposure. When I compared all the photos afterwards there appeared to be a light in one of them that I couldn’t see in any of the other photos.

Prior to this myself and my first officer along with another aircraft could see lights that were appearing randomly in the sky out in front of us. The other aircraft reported seeing lights first and then ATC queried us if we saw any lights. I initially thought they were talking about another aircraft so I was looking for strobes or movement in the direction he stated. Didn’t see another airplane but then started looking at the sky in front of us. What I initially thought were some stars started to vary in intensity. Over the course of roughly 20-30 min we both noticed what looked like stars only they would appear and occasionally get very bright, much brighter than any other star in the sky. This would last a few seconds then it would dim to nothing. It was all happening in roughly the same area in front of us and although it wasn’t much I noticed lights moving in relation to one another. In other words they did not appear stationary. There were times I would be looking at 2 or 3 different lights that had recently become visible where they weren’t earlier. It would sometimes look like one was stationary but then another was moving in relation to the stationary one.

This happened around 3:00-3:30a when we were just South of Raleigh, NC, flying northbound. There were no clouds outside and the sky was completely clear.