Hi everyone.

Last Wednesday I was in a car with family, leaving Phoenix AZ. It was nighttime so I was staring out the window (am the kind of person who's always looking for supernatural things but never seeing any...) and I saw this blinking light. At first it was no big deal and I just thought it was a plane, although when it blinked it seemed like there were several lights in a small cluster, at times looking both red and white, almost sparkling. It seemed pretty far away. I noticed that with every blink, it would move further upward...okay, pretty normal. But then it moved diagonally, and it looked to be going pretty fast. It would move diagonally and then with the next blink, move upward. Or sometimes it moved horizontally , only a short distance. I tried pointing it out to my family but they thought it was just a helicopter, so I didn't pay attention to it for a little while, and it looked like it had vanished. Then I saw it again, but this time there was another similar blinking light nearby. One seemed to be moving towards the other one, which was moving away. When one would blink, the other would not...it was like they were taking turns or communicating. Finally they moved pretty far away from eachother and I didn't see them again. Does anyone have any ideas as to what this was? I know there's planes that have lights flashing at the tip of each wing but I thought the diagonal movement was odd, it seemed almost random....forgive me, I'm not very good with aircrafts so I hope someone can tell me if this was just a regular plane or helicopter. Thank you!

At night you have no depth perception, so that two aircraft in your line of sight, but at different distances can appear to merge and then move apart.

Most aircraft have red anti collision beacons underneath the fuselage and above the fuselage. Beechcraft 1900 models are an exception with white (falshing) anti collision lights.

In addition aircraft also have navigation lights red on the left wing, green on the right and white at the tail.

Wingtips also have strobe lights which pilots may elect to use in poor weather, but these bright strobes are not always on.

Finally aircraft will also have bright steady landing lights as they come towards you. Colours and characteristics will change with relation to their aspect to the viewer. If you understand the layout of lights on an aircraft then you can interpret if the movement is logical.

For example with navigation lights, if you saw a green light going from right to left in your field of vision this would not make sense as it would indicate an aircraft going backwards!