Look Up!

So, these are weird, and cool. Out of Norway:

Images of the light that appeared in the sky above the Norwegian city of Tromso and elsewhere prompted explanations ranging from a meteor, northern lights, a failed missile or even a UFO.
Describing the latest failure of the Bulava as a major embarrassment for the military, leading Russian defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said the images were consistent with a missile failure.

"Such lights and clouds appear from time to time when a missile fails in the upper layers of the atmosphere and have been reported before," he told AFP.

"At least this failed test made some nice fireworks for the Norwegians," he joked.

The Mail has more:

..despite earlier reports denying a missile launch yesterday. Even early today there was no formal confirmation from the Russian Defence Ministry.

The light appears to be unconnected with the aurora borealis, or northern lights, the natural magnetic phenomena that can often be viewed in that part of the world.

The mystery began when a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain in the north of the country. It stopped mid-air, then began to move in circles. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky.

Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre - lasting for ten to 12 minutes before disappearing completely.

Onlookers describing it as 'like a big fireball that went around, with a great light around it' and 'a shooting star that spun around and around'.

Yesterday a Norwegian defence spokesman said the display was most likely from a failed Russian test launch.

The Telegraph has video:

The sighting of an eerie turquoise light provoked hundreds of reports of UFO sightings when it appeared over the Norwegian city of Tromso. Unfortunately the spectacular plume of light was created by the latest failed test-flight of a new Russian missile The Bulava missile was test-fired from a submarine in the White Sea before dawn on Wednesday. The 12th test launch of the missle and the seventh time the firing has ended in failure.

Now, of course, the Russian missile explanation is the perfectly reasonable, sane, rational explanation. For a flavor of the less respectable speculation also abroad, we turn to the Examiner:

Following a cross-volley of interpretations of the Dec. 9, 2009 blue-green light vortex over Norway on the eve of Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech (Russian missile; ETs destroying Russian missile), two researchers have independently posited that HAARP, a space-based weapon of mass destruction one of whose antenna fields is close to the site of the Norwegian spiral light. According to one of the researchers, David Wilcock (see below), one of his confidential sources stated the Norway spiral light was part of Project Blue Beam... One of the alleged purposes of Project Blue Beam is the use of advanced electromagnetic imaging such as that produced by HAARP and exhibited in the Norway spiral light as a psychological mass conditioning device in aid of the implementation of a global corporate new world order. If this analysis is accurate, the Norwegian light may have been a HAARP-induced effect attempting to anchor an extraterrestrial-like or “transcendent” aura around U.S. President Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Oslo the following day, Nov. 10...

HAARP exists and has some pretty interesting capabilities:

"HAARP’s main job is to produce radio waves to probe the ionosphere," an Air Force Research Laboratory officer said in October.

Which is true — up to a point.


A drive by Clifford Stone on the X-Files-esque uber-site Above Top Secret to use the Freedom of Information Act to turn up UFO-related documents has led to the release of a fascinating report, HAARP: Research and Applications. It’s from the Air Force Research Laboratory and Office of Naval Research, and it lays out the uses the military see for HAARP. Turns out the Pentagon wants some military bang for their buck from the program.

HAARP can actually perform a lot of militarily important functions, all involving the interactions of radio waves with the high atmosphere, magnetosphere and ionosphere...

The third band is optical and near-optical: HAARP can make lights in the sky. While we have looked at the effect of creating high-altitude plasmas before (as possible anti-missile defence), the document notes that it can also produce "airglow with megawatt power…in the IR [infrared] region of the spectrum." This has "significant military implications for IR detection and countermeasures." The picture with this shows the IR glow below a satellite, suggesting that the system may be able to blank out the view of IR satellites selectively. Given that such satellites are the best way of detecting the launch of ICBMs, this is a significant capability...

I know nothing much about the purported "Project Blue Beam" or other claims from the Examiner article. From Russia:

More from the Telegraph:

The object has been compared to an Imperial Cruiser in the Star Wars films and witnesses estimated it could be up to a mile wide.

Two film clips exist which appear to show the same object and footage has been repeatedly playing on Russian television news channels...

The identity of the shape has not been confirmed. Russian reports ruled out a UFO but police refused to comment.

Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defence UFO analyst, said it was "one of the most extraordinary UFO clips I've ever seen".

"At first I thought this was a reflection but it appears to move behind a power line, ruling out this theory."

A spokesman for aerospace journal Jane's News said: "We have no idea what it is."

And from Egypt:

More from AFP:

Every night in the run-up to Christmas thousands of Egypt's Coptic Christians have been gathering in a Cairo suburb eager for a glimpse of a vision that has given hope to their marginalised community.

It is three hours past midnight in Al-Warrak, a poor working class neighbourhood of the Egyptian capital, and a 10,000-strong crowd is silently staring at the sky.

Then the appearance of a mysterious light over the church tower jolts the gathering into a frenzy of cries and ululations. It is the apparition of the Virgin Mary, they say.

Thousands have been coming nightly since the first sighting of the Virgin Mary on December 10, in the hope of being blessed by her light...

"The first person to spot the sighting of the Virgin Mary was a Muslim neighour. He took a video and pictures and distributed them to everyone," said Father Fishay, a priest at the Warrak church, describing how he first heard of the apparition.

Hassan, the Muslim neighbour, was sitting at his local coffee shop when at around 8:30 pm, he saw a strong light coming from the church.

Others on the street began to notice the light and saw a bird circling above the church. At around 2 am, a vision of the Virgin Mary in her white and blue robes appeared, Fishay said.

But Muslim residents of the area insist it is a hoax, with someone creating the image with laser beams...

From the major Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram:

...neighbours, worried by crowds gathering outside, called at midnight on 10 December to ask if something was wrong. "The phone calls poured in and many people said they had just seen an apparition of Virgin Mary on the right dome of the church," said Father Dawoud, who added that Muslim neighbours were among the ...callers, including "Haj Rashad, a neighbour and a dear friend who told me, 'what are you doing here, father? I have just seen Our Lady Mariam with my own eyes, go and see for yourself'." "At first we thought that a little kid was playing with a flash light, but then the light intensified and moved from the tree in front of the church entrance up to the right dome and an embodiment of Virgin Mary could be easily recognised. It stayed there for a while. I have captured the scene with my mobile phone," says Hassan, the neighbourhood distributor of gas cylinders. On Monday the Coptic Orthodox Bishopric in Giza issued a statement: "On 11 Friday, at 1am, a full apparition of the Virgin Mary on the right dome of the church was reported by at least 3,000 people. She appeared in her usual heavenly blue costume. She was crowned and the concrete cross on the dome was placed on top of her crown. Those present captured photos and videos of the Holy scene," read the statement. The scene, as described, was broadcast on Amr Adib's talk show "Cairo Today" on 13 December. According to Bishop Theodosios of Giza, it was important to investigate the event in detail. "I stayed up all night on Sunday. I saw doves appear suddenly in the sky. They flew in circles in front of the church before they vanished into thin air. They were floating rather than hovering with their wings," said Bishop Theodosios, adding that it is uncommon for doves to fly at night..."