Possible sighting over Southwest Riverside Co. 12/24/11 9:20pm local

On the way home from looking at Christmas light displays and some last minute shopping tonight, we saw a strange light way up in the sky. It was a bright red-yellow light, moving slowly from ENE to WSW. It changed intensity several times, even winked out then came back once. It finally disappeared completely after we had watched it opn binoculars and commented on it for several minutes.

Anybody else see anything strange in the sky tonight?

Hot Air balloon rides are popular for watching xmas lights. Saw one tonight that at first made me go WTF. From a distance I could describe like you did.

Was it....... Santa Claus ?

Someone is gonna ask for pics, so it might as well be me.

Were you able to get a pic?

Pics plz, or Santa will leave you a lump of coal.
I say it was Rudolph!

It was too high overhead to be a hot air balloon. Tried for pics but it was too dark and I would have needed a telescope or 150x zoom to get a decent look at it much less a photo. I looked at it through my Pentax 10X24 binoculars, and it was way up there, moving around, and lit up kind of red-orange-yellow. Strange color I've never seen before on a meteor, which this wasn't, or a satellite. I've seen satellites, the shuttle, and space station go over before. This looked similar to the space station but more red-yellow than white-yellow in color. The way it disappeared from the sky was similar to the way the station passes from view, too.

reply to post by Icarus Rising


My mother pointed one out to me on Christmas Eve.

By the time I got to see it, it was just an orange blinking light that moved east then finally disappeared. No cloud cover because every other star was visible in the night sky and the flight path for the airport nearby is on the other side of the house.

I've also never seen a plane that had a single orange light.

Before I got into the kitchen though, she said it had been a blue colour and when I asked her to draw it because she mentioned an unusual shape, what she drew was a circle in the middle and then a sort of spike on the top and bottom.