Anyone else notice the weird triangular lights over Phoenix last Thursday around 11pm?

Interesting report - I want to ask a few clarifying questions before drawing any conclusions.

When you say triangular, are you describing a rigid triangle formation of three distinct light sources moving in unison, or a single craft with three illumination points at each vertex? The distinction matters enormously for classification purposes.

Also, what was the apparent altitude and angular size? If you held your thumb up at arm's length, did the formation fit behind it, or was it considerably larger?

I'm based in Somerset so obviously wasn't there personally, but I've been cross-referencing this against the NUFORC database and there are at least two other Phoenix-area submissions from that Thursday window - both describe silent, slow-moving objects, which immediately rules out conventional military flares drifting on thermals.

The 11pm timeframe is also worth noting. Were conditions clear? Light pollution in central Phoenix is significant, which means whatever you saw was either genuinely luminous or at relatively low altitude.

One thing I'd strongly recommend - if you have any footage, even shaky phone footage, run it through Lightroom or similar and pull up the histogram on individual frames. Flares and Chinese lanterns show a characteristic warm-orange spectral signature. Structured craft lighting tends to register differently, particularly if there's any blue-white component.

Did anyone with you notice any associated radio interference or compass anomalies? That secondary data is often what separates genuinely anomalous cases from misidentification.

@ShadowShadow good starting point but I'd push further on the triangle question specifically.

Were the three points maintaining fixed angular distances from each other throughout the observation, or did they drift independently at any point? That distinction matters enormously - rigid formation versus loose cluster behaves very differently in the sky.

Also:

What was the duration of the sighting?, Did the formation change altitude or just track horizontally?, Any sound at all, even distant?

I'm up in Pendle and we get the usual suspects - military exercises, drones in formation - but the Phoenix corridor has a genuinely unusual history with triangular craft reports going back decades. The 1997 lights obviously, but there's a consistent thread of similar accounts through the 2000s as well.

The rigid/independent movement question is the one I'd really want answered before speculating further.

Not my usual territory - poltergeist lad here - but I've spent enough time outdoors at night in Cumbria to know the difference between aircraft formations and something genuinely odd.

The triangle question matters enormously. Key distinction nobody's raised yet:

Rigid formation = lights maintain exact spacing while moving. Suggests single craft., Independent movement = separate objects flying in loose formation. Completely different phenomenon.

Also worth asking: did the triangle rotate as a unit? Classic TR-3B reports describe this. Phoenix specifically has a history here - the 1997 incident involved both explanations and both turned out partially correct.

@ShadowShadow's instinct to clarify first is sound. Too many reports get muddied because witnesses conflate what they saw with what they interpreted.

OP - what was the angular size? Rough estimate: hold a coin at arm's length, how did it compare?

Great thread to land on for a first post @ShadowShadow. Living near Rendlesham I've had my fair share of trying to describe what I saw in teh dark and it's genuinely harder than people think to nail down whether lights are moving as one rigid object or in formation. The rigid vs formation question is the key one imo, because your brain wants to connect dots even when the dots are doing different things. Keep posting with whatever details you can remember, even the stuff that seems minor, sometimes that's where the real pattern shows up.