The star next to the moon tonight

The bright "star" next to the nearly Full Moon tonight was Jupiter, in case you were wondering.

stupid UFO sightings

Hi. I've spent much of my life outside at night looking up. I've seen some amazing things. I've never seen a UFO. I've seen things that would have easily been confused as an unknown object, until I figured or observed what exactly it was. Things like inbound aircraft to O'Hare, geese lit up by stupid uplights in Chicago, spectacular bolide fireballs, reflections off of Iridium satellites, etc. The general public doesn't really look up very often, and hence doesn't really know what they are seeing. So Venus, or Jupiter, or a series of balloons become a UFO, which despite the name become a ... UFO.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/10/15/nyc-fox-station-reports-jupiter-and-balloons-as-ufos/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BadAstronomyBlog+%28Bad+Astronomy%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

small earthquake swarm just north of Death Valley and Scotty's Castle

This in an interesting swarm of earthquakes just to the north of Scotty's Castle in Death Valley.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/FaultMaps/117-37.html