A trail of lights stretching across the night sky caught some Kiwi stargazers by surprise on Friday night.
The "bright stream" of lights caused some confusion in the Waikato at first, but there is an explanation.
49 Starlink satellites were launched into orbit, in SpaceX's first mission of 2022.
Falcon 9 took off from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre. Soon after, reports of strange lights in the sky surfaced online.
Robin Ranga told 1News she saw the Starlink satellites over her home in Port Waikato at 9.48pm on Friday night.
She described it as an "unreal kind of a spectacle", and at first had no idea what it was.
"First impression looked like lit-up vapor stream from a plane, but there was no plane," Ranga said.
"As it got closer this bright band narrowed to a single line."
Richard Easther, a professor at Auckland University, told 1News the positions of each satellite spread out with time, but for the first few days after launch they resemble a “train” to observers on the ground.
"They circle the globe in less than two hours, but not every orbit will take them over New Zealand — in general the best passes will be not too long after sunset or before sunrise.
"There will be more launches, so even if you missed this one, there will be many others."
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