Above Oregon Skies: Tons of Satellites, Some Burning / Blinking, Random Meteors

Published 07/14/25 at 6:55 p.m.
By Andre' GW Hagestedt, Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Portland, Oregon) - Whatever you do, wherever you are in Oregon or Washington, make sure you look up at night soon. In fact, give the celestial skyscape a good five-minute stare. More if you can. Right now, especially, is a kind of “season of satellites,” as I've nicknamed it. You're going to see more of them than usual – and a whole bunch of other beautiful to bizarre things as well. (Shooting star in Portland back in May / Oregon Coast Beach Connection).

This has simply been an astounding summer in the night skies, even for rather light-polluted Portland.

A partial list of what I've seen just this week: numerous bright shooting stars (and there's not even an official meteor shower), satellites exhibiting “flashing” (a bit unusual), a long train of no less than 14 satellites, and most spectacularly: a satellite burning up in a fiery, surreal blaze.

There was even a major green fireball documented being seen from the Pacific Northwest, about 10:30 p.m. on Friday night. I didn't see that one, but just hours later I witnessed that satellite burning up.

Think what you could see if you were in a clearer area like the coastlines of Washington, Oregon or any rural areas?

Moreover, I'm only out for a brief 15 minutes or so at night, taking a quick walk through a favorite urban nature spot. If I'm spotting all these wacky phenomena in mere 15-minute jaunts and from Portland's somewhat hazy skies – what are you missing?

Manzanita / Oregon Coast Beach Connection

This year, I'm seeing stuff I've never encountered before up there. It's been mind-blowing.

Now, granted I have some amount of luck when it comes to nocturnal viewing. My coastal wanderings often took me to the Neahkahnie Viewpoints by Manzanita after dark, and I had enormous fortune catching sight of many shooting stars. This was often when there were no showers going on, either.

Then again, if it's clear out, my neck is permanently set in the gazing-upward position. So, I'm paying a lot of attention as well. Thanks to that I got to see the aurora borealis with my naked eyes late last year.

I have seen two fireballs (much larger than meteors) exploding within sight of Portland, and most people are lucky to see this once in a lifetime. Even crazier, they were both two years apart – almost to the day and to the hour (both happened around 2:45 a.m.) Spectacular Green Fireball Lights Up Oregon Valley Through Washington Coast

Which is why I flipped out late Friday when what appeared to be a satellite came zipping in from the west and suddenly became a bright, white hot blob – brighter than the moon but about as big as the lights from a low-flying aircraft. From there it was about two, maybe three seconds of a blob growing in intensity and leaving an intense trail behind it.

Atop Cape Foulweather at Depoe Bay it's always spectacular: I've never seen many meteors from here but always at Neahkahnie.

I was floored: I yelled “oh shit” and even stumbled slightly. That trail was – strangely – made of straight lines, almost like a track. But they were breaking up and becoming fragmented. It wasn't like the fireballs I'd seen, which had a definite arc to them. This was really weird. And it turned out it was no fireball, which are natural. That would explain the color and the straight lines. I'd seen what were probably a few million dollars of space equipment go up in flames.

Absolutely stunning.

I'd seen something like this before this summer. A really bright aircraft was moving in from the south, but I noticed it wasn't blinking. So I kept my eye on it, out of curiosity, and then it got brighter as it zipped along northward, and going faster than any aircraft. About halfway up the sky I realized it was a satellite (those don't blink but aircraft do). It could've been the ISS – but whatever it was it was more intense than any satellite I'd ever seen (or the ISS sightings I've had, for that matter). It faded as it went deeper into the northern sky.

Meteor shower photo NASA: Get the hell out of your pad, whether you're in Burns, Bend or Bandon.

That's the thing about this season: you'll see more satellites and for much longer right about now because of the way the Earth is tilted at this moment, in relation to the northern hemisphere. For us, the sun is higher, so it illuminates satellites above us much longer and more intensely.

One night in early July, an incredible parade of satellites flowed overhead. They were dim, but moving south to northeast, separated by a good 40 degrees. At least 14 drifted by, which I saw again a few nights later.

And then there's been the flashing satellites. The big rule is satellites are steady lights in the sky and aircraft blink. Also, satellites are smaller dots of light and move faster and in a way that's rather distinctive compared to jets. Yet there's no mistaking I saw satellites that were blinking – or least they would fade a bit, reappear along the same trajectory and then suddenly glow brighter. It was different than a flash, but rather a kind of blinking increase / decrease that occurred every few seconds.

Did I just see some black ops thing? Last night (Sunday) I saw two do this, and their trajectory even criss-crossed as one came from the west and the other was moving southward. What the hell??

I knew that if they were satellites, this somehow meant they were getting illuminated more and then suddenly less. You could tell this wasn't a light coming from the machine – but reflecting off the thing.

Indeed, it turns out they sometimes rotate or tumble, and that's when you see the sunlight reflected on them go on and off. It's like when you took mirrors as kids and reflected the sun back to your friend trying to flash code (but you knew no code....so it's a silly memory).

Truth is stranger than science fiction, whether you're on the Oregon coast or elsewhere.

This satellite thing won't go on much longer – it typically seems to fade a bit later in July. In fact, these wee little spaceships of ours were much brighter around the first of July. You won't see them like this during the clearer skies of winter.

So, get out there at night. It's not rocket science (OK maybe part of it is). Just get out there.

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