Starlink trains: what they look like, when, and why they vanish

A "string of pearls": 10 to 60 dim lights, evenly spaced, gliding in a perfectly straight line, silent, taking 2–5 minutes to cross the sky. Seen within a day or two of a Starlink launch, mostly in the hour or two after sunset or before sunrise.

Why a line: the satellites are released together and have not yet spread out into their final orbits. Why only near dusk and dawn: you need the satellites lit by the Sun while your sky is dark. Why they vanish mid-sky: they enter Earth's shadow.

Our checks propagate every object launched in the last 30 days and group them into trains. The Tonight page lists upcoming trains for your city, and a case with a matching train gets the stamp "Case closed: Starlink conga line". If you saw a train and we did not predict one, the batch may have launched hours earlier and not been cataloged yet; say so in the thread and we will re-run the case.