After a planetary display alarmed some residents of California’s Central Valley, the sheriff’s office took to social media to deter 911 calls about the phenomenon.
“There is no reason to report this,” the Stanislaus County sheriff’s Facebook post said Thursday, referring to the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the night sky.
A sheriff’s spokesman told the Modesto Bee that 12 people called the regional 911 dispatch center about the “lights in the sky,” and that the California Highway Patrol reported similar calls.
The two bright planets appear unusually close together this week, and the conjunction was most pronounced on Wednesday night.
It was definitely not the most mundane astronomical sighting to be reported as an emergency. The Atherton police once received a call about the moon.
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