Last night my wife and I decided to go on an impromptu trip to Hope, Alaska to take our Jeep on a trail. Before we got to the trail we were on a backroad in the middle of nowhere. She was watching a light in the sky that resembled a star or plane in the distance. Upon watching this light, it seemed to be moving or "dancing" in the sky. I stopped the Jeep and took out my phone because it was doing odd things. It was getting brighter, changing colors, ascending, descending, getting closer, then further away. At one point, I decided to turn the Jeep off and just watch this "Orb". I couldn't make sense of it; neither of us could (you can hear us in the video saying the same things at them same time about it's movements).
Keep in mind that I am zoomed in on my phone's camera at 3x. However, I had may hands rested on the side of my door with my window down. I was holding the phone with both hands as steady as I could. Some of the video is me moving the phone, but most of the objects movements were it's own. Towards the end, the Orb started getting close to us (about right after I flashed it with my light bar), then it went further away. After watching it for a little more than 11 minutes, it started to dim-out and eventually disappear all together.
I have a DJI Mini Pro. This did not move like any drone I have ever seen. I was also in the US Army for six years as an infantry soldier with a tour in Tarmiyah, Iraq in 2008. I have seen a lot of arial vehicles, none of them have looked like this. I'm not saying anything sinister, or saying it's "unnatural". I'm saying that I have never seen anything like it. If someone can try to analyze this video, edit it, anything to try to figure out what it may be, it would be greatly appreciated.
This is the full video, uncut, unedited. It was shot on my iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Important note: I used CapCut to downsize the file to upload video. Reformatted from .MOV to MP4 and lowered bitrate. Originally shot in 4K—downsized to 1080p
Time: 2/6/2026 @ 2225
Location: Hope, Alaska
by I-A-M-C-R-E-E
3 Comments
I’m commenting on my own post as to follow the submission statement rules for this sub. If anyone has questions, I’d be more than welcome to answer them.
It’s a great capture! I used to see these “moving stars” years ago while I was living on Cape Cod. I would only see them late at night – usually after midnight or so. Sometimes they’d be in groups of 2 or 3. Haven’t seen them in years.
Seems like a star to me. It would be easier to tell if the trees or something were in view the whole time. As it is, they come into view twice about 1:40s apart, and the object barely moved, if at all.
https://imgur.com/GbZpJZF
Difficult to say because the perspective changes and rotates a bit. The ‘dancing’ and changing colors could just be normal [scintillation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkling) of a stars light being distorted by our atmosphere.
Which direction were you looking?