That weird string of light in the sky around Philly? It’s Elon Musk’s.

If you saw a string of lights zooming around the sky on Thursday night, you’re not alone.

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t. Just ask Elon Musk.

Among social media users who reported seeing the lights was 6ABC sports anchor Jamie Apody, who posted a photo on X, formerly known as Twitter, which is coincidentally owned by Musk.

“Anyone else just see a line of moving lights in the sky?!,” Apody tweeted, adding a photo of the heavenly phenomenon. She added in a later tweet that the lights “must’ve been” SpaceX’s Starlink satellites making their way over the area.

“Convinced the kids it was aliens,” she wrote. As any good parent should.

Incidentally, she was correct — about Starlink, not aliens. (Although, personally, we’re open to all possibilities.)

According to Starlink tracking website Find Starlink, which began tracking the project’s paths in 2021 and quickly went viral, the Philadelphia region’s skies played host to the satellites Thursday night. They were visible at about 7:29 p.m., and then again at 8:37 p.m., right around the time of Apody’s tweet.

And, Find Starlink indicates, there are likely to be several sighting opportunities in the area over the next few days, as well. Here is what you need to know:

Operated by the Musk-founded SpaceX, Starlink is a “constellation of thousands of satellites” in a low Earth orbit, according to the company’s website. Since officially launching in 2019, the satellites have become a somewhat common sighting in night skies around the world.

In part, that’s thanks to their proximity to Earth. At about 341 miles above the Earth’s surface, Starlink satellites are much closer to us than other, more familiar geostationary satellites, which are more than 22,000 miles away.

According to the Starlink website, their satellites use a “compact, flat-panel design” to minimize volume, allowing SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to efficiently transport them to space. The company, Starlink’s website notes, is “the only satellite operator with the ability to launch its own satellites as needed,” and as a result, its technology is “constantly updated.”

Starlink’s constellation of satellites is used to provide broadband internet service that is “capable of supporting streaming, online gaming, [and] video calls,” its website says. As a result of the satellites’ close proximity to Earth, the site adds, the service is able to provide high-speed internet to subscribers worldwide at lower latency compared to other satellite internet services. Anyone who lives in an area where Starlink is available can subscribe to the service.

In short, Elon Musk.

Musk, the leader of SpaceX, X, and Tesla, is “the most dominant player in space” with SpaceX and Starlink, according to the New York Times. But due to his “erratic and personality-driven style,” Musk’s dominance in the field of satellite internet has “increasingly worried military leaders around the world.”

Principally, the Times reported, that’s because Starlink is frequently the only option for internet access in war zones, natural disaster areas, and other remote areas. Currently, it is used in Ukraine for drone strike coordination and intelligence, and the U.S. Defense Department is a notable customer.

According to the Times, Musk “alone can decide to shut down Starlink internet access for a customer or country,” and also “has the ability to leverage sensitive information that the service gathers.”

In Ukraine, for example, Musk has reportedly restricted access to Starlink services a number of times throughout the war with Russia, at one point refusing a Ukrainian military request to turn on Starlink services near Crimea.

“This is not just one company, but one person,” cybersecurity Dmitri Alperovitch told the Times. “You are completely beholden to his whims and desires.”