What's this?

[Shibby]

Even after everything you've said, Jim, I'm afraid I still have to believe it was birds. Through a telescope (I've seen it myself) they whizz on by and you cannot get a good look at each individual bird, leading to a "what was that??" moment. I'm assuming it was a clear night, given that you were doing astronomy. You can just see geese against a clear night sky... A dark grey B2 at high altitude? Hard to imagine you'd even notice this. That's they way they're designed. Interestingly, according to wikipedia, they're "speculated to have an upward-facing light sensor which alerts the pilot to increase or reduce altitude to match the changing illuminance of the sky"

Also, this would be an incredibly rare event and for you to see it 3 times seems very unlikely.

Of course, nobody knows for sure and we may all be wrong!

[coulthamst]

Hi Shibby. I can only repeat what I have said before. The groupings I saw and the shapes of the individual objects were absolutely clear and sharp, with clearly delineated geometry of both the triangular (not "vee") flight formations and of the outlines of the individual objects, on each occasion on which I observed them. In particular, the wing outlines with parallel sides and right-angles at the ends with no movement or variation of any kind together with the overall geometrically-precise shapes preclude any identification of them as birds. I am absolutely certain that what I saw were man-made flying craft, and my query was aimed at identifying them. Although the sightings lasted only around four seconds each that was sufficiently long to achieve the stated level of visual clarity.

[Erla]

Can you remember approx dates you witnessed this phenomena? Birds tend to migrate at certain times, to certain destinations. So "a flock" going north in January... Mhm. Not very likely

 

[Kropster]

Given the current advanced stage of drone technology and research I would think that it could be a formation or 'swarm' of stealthy drones.

There is a lot of work going into this swarming of drones for combat.