John Pike

The answer: Venus, with 99% certainty. Here’s how I came to that conclusion: 1) the object is out of focus. When point light sources are out of focus, they create a “bokeh” effect, where they turn into discs. This disc shows the silhouette of the optics. I can even see the collimation error of the elements from imperfect alignment visible in the disc! 2) The time. This was captured shortly after sunset, which is when Venus appears in the southwestern sky. 3) The scintillation. They are actually focused on the air in front of the object, which appears to move like water. This is normal. This much movement generally only happens either when viewing low on the horizon, or through our entire atmosphere. Since the video was filmed shortly after sunset, I know Venus was fairly high in the sky, so it has an appropriate amount of atmospheric turbulence in the video. 4) The movement. After transiting Zenith, Venus follows the equatorial plane to the horizon. It makes an arc in the sky. At dusk, Venus is SSW, and it is moving west along this arc (it’s actually Earth’s rotation, but it appears like Venus is moving). The amount of motion and angle here is consistent with what I would expect from a fixed tripod level with the horizon like the camera operator would use, and at high magnification the sidereal motion would be easily visible. If it were Jupiter, the sky would be darker and Jupiter would appear to move vertically. 5) The consistency. Planes (or alleged drones) have beacons that strobe. Even out of focus, this would appear as flashes of increased brightness. If this was a defocused landing light (which similar videos often are) you would see slight inconsistencies to the luminosity. It also wouldn’t explain the scintillation. Anything I missed?