Wheel In The Sky
No, this post isn’t some type of Journey retrospective. It’s about some odd event that occurred over the skies of Norway last night.
Details are still rather sketchy at this point but that something odd happened cannot be denied. Something odd enough to perk even my overly-jaded interest.
The article from The Daily Mail has some cool pictures, eyewitness quotes and even some video. It’s certainly the strangest celestial event I’ve ever seen recorded. According to the article it was visible from Trøndelag to Finnmark (which appear to be about 930 miles apart according to google maps).
The majority of the opinions seem to be blaming it on some unannounced Russian rocket launch. I’ve never seen a rocket that produced a perfect concentric spiral before. I’ve seen rockets fail before, and spiral out-of-control but never in a stationary manner. My favorite astrophysicist has weighed in with a post on her blog, but I want to know how it can sit and rotate in one position?
In one of the photos you can see the aftermath with the spiral cloud and the blue cloud dissipating. That would rule out a projected image. And the article says that un-named astronomers have ruled out any type of auroral activity. I’ve watched quite a few meteor showers in my day and I’ve certainly never seen anything like that, so we’re back to a failed launch of some kind.
If it was a failed launch, why wait so long to abort (read self-destruct) it? It was clearly out of control from launch so you would think they would have blown it up early on rather than letting it sit there and pinwheel for a few minutes. And if they were reluctant to blow it up, that begs the question what the hell was the payload?
Since no one is stepping up to claim it as their own, my guess is that it will remain a mystery.
December 9th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
If they had used range safety on it (basically blown it up before it had a chance to do any damage) we would not have been treated to such a lovely display. As far as I can tell, there was NO range safety triggered. If there’s no range safety on these types of launches then they should be stopped until some can be installed.
Launches are never certain, and the safety of people in the area is of critical importance. I know sometimes it seems like we hold/delay launches for the silliest of reasons, but this is a prime example of why we are so cautious. If I were a Norwegian, I would be rather unhappy about this event.
December 9th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Thanks for the insight! And I agree, if I was in the Norway government I’d be making some rather pointed calls to Russia as there are treaties in place to be sure they are notified ahead of time.
December 9th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Oh, they probably were notified. It’s not like anyone can launch anything on the sly anymore. They can hide that they’re GOING to do it, but as soon as they light the candle, bells start ringing. It’s been shown that navigation had been restricted in the region around the time of the launch, so they weren’t trying to hide that it was happening. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet heard who requested that restriction. (And it’s not information I would be privy to.)
No, the unhappiness should arise solely because any rocket with that level of perturbation should have been considered a risk and destroyed. If they couldn’t destroy it and they had range safety in place, then there were multiple failures on the hardware. Not an implausible thought, actually. If no range safety was present, that’s when you start the inter-governmental “discussions.”
December 9th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
NavTex recorded a coastal warning for a rocket launch around Archangel on the 9th of December.
http://www.frisnit.com/cgi-bin/navtex/view.cgi?id=1159919&lan=en&type=24H&message_filter=&search=ROCKET&station_filter=&date=2009-12-09&source=a4f7a470329caf85e2488355c7e88328&offset=0
It looks like this warning was broadcast on the NavTex short wave radio frequency. It shows that the window for the launch was 2300 on the 7th of December and extended to the 10th at 0900.
December 9th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
There are very good photos and reports by so many in Norway that this cannot be a hoax. The phenomenon was seen from locations separated by 930 miles, indicating it happened hundreds of miles out in space.
At least one photo shows a contrail indicating a rocket was launched. The contrail ascended through the atmosphere over a period of several minutes prior to the spiral of light. This is indicated by a shearing of the wind at various elevations resulting in a wavy path.
For about two minutes there is a blue spiral emanating from a ground site that intersects the center of the white spiral. The white spiral appears to be spherical because it looks circular from vantage points that are separated by 930 miles.
I think we have entered a new era of missile defense!
I think the blue is light scattered in the atmosphere by an ionized particle beam. The particle beam is disintegrating the rocket that was launched earlier. The white light is the rocket material being blasted away by the particle beam. The vaporized remains of the rocket fade to dark when the beam is turned off.
This would be a perfect time to demonstrate such a defense system with President Obama about to receive the Nobel peace prize in Norway for doing nothing but increasing troop levels in Afghanistan.
There are many photos on the net showing cloud circles and spherical lights in the sky over the last eight years. These could also be explained by ionization from particle beams.
The U.S. missile defense system has been based on LASER technology which has been a dismal failure. It has been thought that the Russian approach would use particle beams instead.
I would not expect the Russians to announce this publicly but I’ll bet there are a lot of lights on at the Pentagon tonight.
December 10th, 2009 at 8:44 am
@Eric: Very plausable theroy. The Russians have admited to a launch and are claiming “third stage failure” of a rocket launched from a submarine.
From the CNN article:
“In a written statement, the Russian Defense Ministry said the missile failed in the third stage of its trajectory.
“Unstable work of the engine of the [missile's] third stage was detected by the monitoring systems,” the statement said. “The causes of the technical error are being established by a state commission.”"