KimG

Wow that's it, I did a sketch too. I am so chuffed that you got a video of it Mel, I can show people what it was, thanks so much for posting it up!

Sorry about that Steve, I hadn't even intended it to be a profanity, but I guess that's the world we live in now, my bad. Edited out.

Thanks Rob , I guessed the short chain of sattelites were starlink, but the rest of it was a mystery, later I thought perhaps it was a destroyed sattelite that formed the cloud, but it must have been some kind of debris from releasing the pack, it was a sight to see for sure, one I won't forget in a hurry!

OK , so I have been an astronomer for more than 20 years, seen several comets, all the Messier catalogue bar 1, A decent number of NGC objects, the space staion lots of times even this morning, starlink chains, iridium flares and meteor showers etc. So, at about 5:08 this morning moving at a brisk speed across the southern sky at around 15 or 20 degrees above the horizon was the strangest sight I have ever seen, to the naked eye is was a bight moving cloud about the size of the moon, in my bins there was a very bright sattelite behind the cloud which had lit the cloud with a flare like shape of light, just above the moving cloud was a short chain of lights very close together and equal brightness, several magnitudes fainter than the main bright object (which was brighter than Rigel by a couple of magnitudes) there were other fainter lights slightly above and ahead of the chain. The entire ensemble, cloud and all was moving briskly from west to east and had passed across the sky in less than a couple of minutes. Now if these had been just points of light it would have been striking enough, but to see a huge cloud (as I said, roughly but really a good bit bigger than moon size) moving as well has left me puzzled to the absolute max. I didn't have any meanse of recording it unfortunately, as my description beggars belief I do anticipate a fair amount of sceptisism, but I am not seeking any kind of notoriety or fame, merely reporting what I observed. Later today I will do a sketch based and post it up, trully, for anyone who knows the night sky well, this was the strangest thing you could ever imagine.