Traveling 100 light years to the Hajj only to arrive three months late

This is making the rounds, I want to weigh in on it. If it's a hoax, it's damnably well done. It's not Venus, it's not Jupiter, it's not a conventional aircraft or balloon. This is the newscast from the United Arab Emirates, they speculate that it might be a really sophisticated Israeli drone. Which is a pretty unlikely possibility.

If you haven't heard about this, a glowing white light was seen to descend over the Dome of the Rock, hover for about a minute then rocket back up and vanish. Which wouldn't be especially noteworthy, except that it was (apparently independently) videotaped from four different locations around Jerusalem.

The skeptic in me notes that the object appears that it could be descending and rising on a single cable, although suspended from what I have no idea. It will be interesting to see what comes of this, if anything.

Watch the video, and draw your own conclusions. When you are done, watch the video from Utah of a different sighting of lights in the sky on the same day. For the record, I am intensely skeptical of the possibility that these are of extraterrestrial origin, for reasons I was planning to post about anyway as part of the ongoing SETI discussion. But, they are certainly interesting, whatever they are.

Light over Jerusalem

Lights over Utah

UPDATE:

Here is a post from James Randi's JREF page, attempting to explain how the Jerusalem videos might have been hoaxed. Actually the "explanations" are surprisingly weak and self-contradictory, but it has only been a week since the original videos were released and Randi is not a film-maker or special effects artist. I am much more interested in seeing what someone like John Dykstra or Dennis Muren have to say. Randi has yet to post anything about the Utah video, but check back here occasionally because I'm hoping he will. Here's the blog from the Amazing Randi: JREF Responds

FURTHER UPDATE: Some people have noted that none of the city lights appear to be blinking except for the orb in question, and that this may indicate that the "city" is in fact a photograph. Interesting possibility, will try to replicate this with my own cell phone camera from the Admiral Overlook tonight, will post the results here.