People around East Lancashire were baffled by an unusual line of lights across the sky on Thursday night, as Elon Musk’s latest project was spotted across the county.

Bright lights in a perfect line were photographed in the sky above Foulridge at around 6.45pm on Thursday, October 24.

They belong to the world’s richest man’s SpaceX Starlink satellites, which form a line of about 20 dots on a perfect 90-degree angle.

Colne resident Damian Symonds was lucky enough to see the spectacle when out with his children near the Foulridge Upper Reservoir.

He said: “It was very fascinating. As a personal hobby, I am really interested in what goes on in the skies. I was half expecting it to be UFO, I was amazed.

“It is not something you would see very often and to try and catch that again would be very hard.

“I will try again but I guess I was there in the right place at the right time.”

The latest batch of satellites was launched in the US at the start of last week.

Websites allow people to track the current locations of the satellites, including findstarlink, where users can see when Starlink is likely to be visible again.

Current predictions on the website say that it can be seen at 5.21pm tonight, Wednesday October 30, when looking from West to East in Blackburn.

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by the American aerospace company, founded by Musk in 2002, and provides coverage to more than 60 countries across the world.

Currently, more than 7,000 satellites have been launched, with the network set to reach 12,000, rising to as many as 42,000 in the future.

They are launched in batches of 60 before they gradually rise to a higher orbit and become less visible.

Once in place, the network – known as a mega constellation – will beam internet coverage down to any location on Earth.

According to space experts, the current high rate of sightings is due to the satellites being in low orbit after they first launch.

SpaceX began launching Starlink satellites in 2019 and they provide internet coverage to the most rural parts of the world by sending thousands of small satellites into orbit, and they beam down broadband signals to areas without strong cable connections.