Satellites swarm the night sky in this new video

Alan Dyer of Amazingsky.net recorded this video from his home in southern Alberta, Canada, around 51 degrees north latitude. Watch satellites swarm across the night sky in a 2.5-hour time lapse aimed toward the summer Milky Way. Video via Alan Dyer/ AmazingSky.net. Used with permission.

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Satellites swarm the night sky in this new video

Alan Dyer of Amazingsky.net shared this mind-boggling video of 2.5 hours of the summer Milky Way, as satellites swarmed the view like a plague of locusts. EarthSky reached out to Alan, who captures his images from southern Alberta in Canada. Alan told us:

I take these images to illustrate the satellite issues.

Here are the details he shared about his video:

This 1-minute time-lapse records the tracks of the large number of satellites now passing across our skies on any given night.

The night in question here was June 13-14, 2026, from 11:43 p.m. MDT to 2:10 a.m. MDT [5:43 to 08:10 UTC], so over about 2.5 hours.

The field of view is 54 degrees by 37 degrees and frames the three stars of the Summer Triangle: Deneb at left, Vega at top and Altair at lower right, in Cygnus the Swan, Lyra the Harp and Aquila the Eagle, respectively.

I shot this from my location in southern Alberta at 51 degrees north latitude. That latitude range is the worst for seeing satellites in abundance as:

1. in summer around the solstice even satellites in low-Earth orbit are lit by sunlight all night long, and …
2. many sets of Starlink satellites peak at the most northerly point in their inclined orbits at about my latitude.

And yes, most of the satellite trails are from SpaceX Starlink satellites as most of the satellites now in orbit are Starlinks. And most seen here are following similar parallel paths, as Starlinks sets do.

Read more: 10,000 Starlink satellites orbiting Earth … and counting

Photographic details

Alan shared the photographic details of his video above and the still image below. He wrote:

The fast lens and long exposures I used do make satellites visible that were too faint to see with the unaided eye, just as fainter stars than your eye can see are recorded. Nevertheless, this shows just how many satellites are now passing through any field of view, be it unaided eye, with a camera or with a telescope.

The movie is from 1,200 frames. I took them starting when the sky was still a deep blue in late twilight until past the middle of the short summer night. The final still images stack the first 200 frames taken over 23 minutes, then each subsequent image adds another 100 frames, recording another 12 minutes of trails. This totals 600 frames at the end, taken over 71 minutes … with so many satellite trails the stars are obliterated. And yet this was only half the number of images taken this night.

Bottom line: Alan Dyer shared this new video as satellites swarm across the sky, obscuring the summer Milky Way. Read more about Alan’s video here.

Read more: 10,000 Starlink satellites orbiting Earth … and counting

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