Can anyone identify this aircraft from the lights?

Can anyone identify what kind of aircraft this is? All of the lights appeared to be on one aircraft. It appeared to be relatively low and relatively slow moving, so slow moving that at times it appeared to hover or nearly hover, but that may have been an illusion.






The same photos zoomed in more:






My wife and I were traveling on I-55 northbound approximately two miles south of Lexington, Illinois. At that point, I-55 is angled northeast. The aircraft passed almost directly overhead heading approximately west-southwest at 10:15-10:16PM CST last night, June 20, 2016.

I checked on www.flightradar24.com and it does not quite match any flight paths for that date and time, at least not any that were shown on their map. Flights shown would have been on the wrong side of I-55 and/or going in the wrong direction as near as I can tell. I do not know how accurate or complete their historical maps are.

The photos hardly do it justice. I am not an expert on aircraft, but I see a lot driving this same route several times a week at the same time of night. We thought at first it might be an aircraft coming in to the airport in Bloomington, Illinois. But this looked pretty weird, quite different from what I normally see.

a reply to: ikonoklast

Normal landing lights. One outboard, one inboard, nose gear, inboard other side, and you can just make out the far outboard.

As for type, that's pretty standard so it could be any type of commercial based type.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thanks, Zaphod. No colored lights? Or do they get washed out by the brighter landing lights?

a reply to: ikonoklast

They tend to either get washed out or blocked by the angles. Some types put the navigation lights on the very wingtip, not the corner like newer ones do. The fuselage light, unless it's a newer strobe is blocked pretty easy by the white lights, when looking from the front.

Based on that, and location, I'm gonna say probably an older commercial platform, maybe an older 737 or something similar. It could have been a tanker, I think there's a base near there.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thanks, Zaphod, I appreciate it.

a reply to: ikonoklast

Were there any strobe lights? Like on the wingtips?

a reply to: Zaphod58

Yes there were strobe (or at least blinking) lights. It didn't look like they were on wingtips, and in fact somewhat it looked like various lights blinked at times, but that may have been an illusion.

I have a video (1 minute, 20 seconds). Is there some way to upload a video to ATS? Or does anyone know of a safe anonymous video upload/sharing site?

I don't really want to put it on my own YouTube, I would prefer to stay relatively anonymous on ATS. I tried uploading it to sendvid, but when I checked the link they gave me it redirected to one of those pages that tells you you have a virus and wants you to call some phone number. I cut my internet connection, killed the browser process in task manager and spent a couple hours making sure my computer wasn't infected. Wouldn't want anyone else to go through that...

a reply to: ikonoklast

That pretty much rules out tanker, as they didn't have strobes, unless they were added after 06. The light pattern is wrong for a large airlifter, so I'm gonna stick with a 737, or one of the others that are a similar configuration and size. Could be military, but probably a commercial flight.

As for videos, I don't make or post them so I'm completely clueless about that.