Bright light on dark sky: from Rus­sia with love

The dark sky abo­ve Spits­ber­gen was lit by a pret­ty spec­ta­cu­lar light for s short moment on Decem­ber 21, a sight that didn’t requi­re addi­tio­nal alco­hol or drugs to make one think of an UFO or some­thing like that. Andre­as Eriks­son who works for KSAT, the com­pa­ny run­ning the satel­li­te anten­n­tas on Pla­tå­berg behind the air­port, mana­ged to take seve­ral pho­tos that sub­se­quent­ly appeared on KSAT’s social media pages. Addi­tio­nal­ly, an auto­ma­tic came­ra of the Kjell Hen­rik­sen Obser­va­to­ri­ums in Advent­da­len took an impres­si­ve video (click here to access the video on the web­site of the obser­va­to­ri­ums; the gist of the mat­ter comes after ca. 15 seconds).

Light phe­no­me­non on the sky abo­ve Spits­ber­gen. Pho­to taken by Andre­as Eriksson/KSAT.

The pho­tos cau­sed much spe­cu­la­ti­on what it actual­ly might have been. Among­st others it was sug­gested that it was San­ta Claus try­ing out a new sledge. If so, it must have been a bit of a hot rod.

Mean­while, infor­ma­ti­on has sur­faced that reve­als the real natu­re of the light. The true expl­ana­ti­on, as descri­bed by the Barents Obser­ver is a Rus­si­an mili­ta­ry rocket with “mili­ta­ry infra­struc­tu­re”. It is not known what this “infra­struc­tu­re” actual­ly is.

From Rus­sia with love.

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