Luminarias, Owls & Strange Lights in the Sky

 

I was back at the Desert Botanical Garden Friday night, this time for the annual Luminarias event.  It's a Holiday tradition for the garden to light all the paths with Luminarias and guests can enjoy the lights and the plants at the same time.  This year of course, we have the added attraction of the Chihuly glass sculptures.

On one of the paths, a group called Liberty Wildlife had two owls for the guests to meet.  Just look at this handsome fellow.

Liberty Wildlife is an organization that nurtures and rehabilitates animals that are rescued or brought to their facility.  

The other owl was a screech owl who looked downright tiny compared to the big horned owl above.  

It was fun meeting these two wise creatures.

Right after viewing the owls, I looked up at the sky as saw this strange set of lights, slowly moving across the sky.  It's hard to tell from this photo, but that trail of light was actually many little individual lights in perfect formation.  (I took this photo with my iPhone, believe it or not.  I'm impressed that I got anything.). 

My friend Julie did a search for lights in the sky over Phoenix and found an explanation.  It is attributed to a set of low-orbit satellites used for SpaceX's broadband network.  I found several videos and news stories about this but the one here is the most succinct with a pretty good video.  After viewing these videos, I'm even more impressed by my iPhone photo.  

I have a new post on Sharon's Sojourns today.  I stopped in at The New York Times.