Wednesday, November 11, 2026 · Homepage Subscribe now♪ Music by DadosaPrime: DadosaPrime

The Ancient Sky

A field journal of the unexplained, the ancient & the astronomical

Welcome to The Ancient Sky.

Every day I go looking for the stories worth your time: real discoveries in space and science, new finds from the ancient world, and yes, the occasional report of something in the sky that nobody can quite explain. No hype, no scare headlines, and no breathless guesses passed off as fact. If a claim is documented, I’ll tell you. If it’s only claimed, I’ll tell you that too, and I’ll show you where I got it. The universe is strange enough without exaggerating it. Let’s get started.

A long exposure over the Gemini North telescope dome on Maunakea, Hawai‘i, shows circular star trails and several straight, broken satellite streaks to the left of the dome.
Fig. 1 · Today’s lead. Credits for every image appear inside the article.

start here →

Lead story · Space

The Viral Satellite Photo Over Mount Taranaki Is Real. Here Is What It Shows, and What It Doesn't

A photo of the night sky over Mount Taranaki in New Zealand is full of satellite trails. Its maker thinks it holds about 14,000 trails from about 1,400 satellites. Tens of millions of people have seen it since mid-October 2026. Many online called it fake and made by AI. It is not.

By Darrell Wallen · Nov 11, 2026 · ≈17 min read aloud

Read the entryListen

Latest entries

Newest in each section
AI-generated promotional portrait of the virtual Nordic singer persona Aeysa

The Weird

Aeysa and the Rise of AI Music

A blonde singer with braids and a Nordic look fills Facebook and TikTok feeds. She holds a microphone. She posts as if she just left the stage.

By Darrell Wallen · Nov 10, 2026 · ≈14 min listen · Read →

A forested hillside in the Sierra Norte de Puebla with a tall weathered rock cliff rising above green trees and shrubs.

Ancient Civilization

Mexico's INAH Says Puebla Site Held a 2,500-Year-Old Solar Observatory; Outside Expert Questions the Label

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History says a Group E complex at Teteles de Ávila Castillo, Puebla, worked as a solar observatory more than 2,500 years ago, the first outside the Maya area. The claim rests on layout and alignments; the announcement gives no radiocarbon date or alignment measurements, and one outside specialist says the word observatory is not entirely justifiable.

By Darrell Wallen · Nov 6, 2026 · ≈32 min listen · Read →

More from the notebook

Most read
A long exposure over the Gemini North telescope dome on Maunakea, Hawai‘i, shows circular star trails and several straight, broken satellite streaks to the left of the dome.

Watch & Listen

Every entry, read aloud.

Each story is also read aloud by the author as a video and a podcast. Same words, same sources, for the commute or the couch.

COMING SOON — no video published yet
  • YouTubeChannel coming soonComing soon
  • RumbleChannel coming soonComing soon
  • PodcastRSS feed coming soonComing soon

Our field rules

Every claim sourced. Documented, claimed, unverified: kept apart.

Every article ends with links to every source used.

Research and drafting are AI-assisted; a human editor reviews the sources and approves each story before it is published.

Documented

There is a record you can read: a transcript, a filing, a paper, an official release.

Claimed

Someone says it is so. We name who, and what they offered as evidence.

Unverified

We could not check it. We say so plainly and never present it as fact.

Get the Morning Brief.

Email notifications are coming soon. Sign up now and you’ll get them as soon as they go live.