Spaceship-like objects on Google Sky

This video on YouTube shows objects that might look to a person with a fertile imagination like spaceships. A quick look at other video uploads from user "SpaceTomorrow" brings up this darling bit of interstellar rapture bible fan-fic, describing God's plan to wormhole the chosen ones off to heaven (represented as a spiral galaxy) or to another place (also a spiral galaxy, but I suppose a less heavenly one) while the Earth gets bashed by a comet.

MUFON UFO tracking map

The Mutual UFO Network has a live internet feed of reported UFO sightings, including an interactive Google map. The interface is a little weird on my netbook (I have to click reload to close the event details box) but a fun, little tool nonetheless. All the little UFO icons scattered about the United States causes one to imagine an airspace teeming with extraterrestrial visitors.

The feed is also on RSS here.

Morristown, NJ UFOs explained

Newsweek's Lab Notes blog writes about the hoaxers who caused the mysterious red lights pictured above to fly over New Jersey in January.

They cooked up a spaceship hoax “to show everyone how unreliable eyewitness accounts are, along with investigators of UFOs.” They used five feet of fishing line to tie flares to each of five three-foot helium balloons and launched them from a field on Jan. 5, 2009. “Once all five balloons were ready for takeoff (with our fingers on the verge of frost bite),” they write, “we struck the 15-minute flares and released them into the sky in increments of fifteen seconds,” filming the UFOs as they floated away.

The blog post includes video of a news story from January, as well as a link to segments on Google Video showing exactly how they did it.

Update from New Jersey Star-Ledger: Morris County prosecutor filing disorderly person charges against these two men.