Three Lights in a Triangle Over Centralia After the Eclipse

What happened

On 10 September 2026, 100.9 The Eagle, a classic-rock station serving the Tri-States, ran “Triangle of Lights Spotted Over Illinois Was Huge & Silent,” credited to Doc Holliday. The piece quotes a report “the National UFO Reporting Center just posted.” In it, a Centralia woman describes walking her dog before dawn on 28 August and seeing three lights crossing the southern sky together. She is not named.

The footage

• Uploader: The witness, through her NUFORC report (sighting id 200644). The station links to her photo and video and does not host its own copy.
• What she shot: “I took a picture (night mode on my phone had a 3 second shutter, and i tried to hold as still as possible) and then I took a 20 second video.”
• What the station saw: The writer says it “looks like it’s a faint black triangle with 3 lights, the most prominent being at the top.” The writer adds: “You can see the object slowly fade out of sight as she’s taking the video.”
• Limits: A handheld 3-second exposure blurs and smears point lights. No timestamps, direction readings or original files have been published.

Timeline

• August 1996: Triangles of “unblinking” lights seen during the Perseids are identified as US Navy NOSS satellites (as recounted by h2g2).
• April 2002: Satellite watchers on SeeSat-L flag a “Triangle Formation of Moving ‘Stars'” UFO report as a NOSS triangle.
• 23 September 2006: Astronomers at the Alberta Star Party watch a NOSS triad cross the Little Dipper (RASC Calgary).
• 27–28 August 2026: A deep partial lunar eclipse. The partial phase ends at about 12:52am CDT, and the penumbral phase at about 2:02am CDT.
• 28 August 2026, about 5:30am CDT: The Centralia sighting.
• By 10 September 2026: NUFORC posts the report, and the station publishes on 10 September.

What witnesses reported

“We were walking our dog at 5:30 in the morning of Aug 28, 2026, after the full moon lunar eclipse,” the witness wrote. “I was looking at the sky, admiring the stars and saw what I thought were 3 very bright stars in a triangle pattern to the south. I stood and watched for a few seconds before I realized all 3 ‘stars’ were slowly moving southward in unison and realized they were lights.” The station adds that she calls herself an avid sky-watcher, lives within 60 miles of Scott Air Force Base, and had never seen anything like it. It “made no sound at all.” The station’s headline and summary describe a triangle “the size of a football field.”

What the research found

The eclipse was long over. Sky & Telescope’s table, sourced to the US Naval Observatory, puts greatest eclipse at 11:13pm CDT on 27 August and the end of the partial phase at 12:52am CDT. The sighting came about three and a half hours after the penumbra was last visible, at roughly 5:30am, with dawn approaching. The eclipse explains why someone was out looking up. It plays no part in the lights.