2003-02-09 - Trondheim (Norway) - Light

Blueish-white light during the night over the city of Trondheim, Norway.

Walking home from the student community house I had a break at a busstop to smoke a cigarette and reply to a SMS message on my cell-phone. After I had sent the message a looked up at the sky to see if there was possibillity for snow, I then noticed a light.

The light was blueish white, sort of like xenon car-headlights. It moved rather slowly from southeast to northwest, approx. 3-4 km. to the south of me. (A guess based on the angel to the light and the apparent cailing of the clouds.) There was no sound, and the route is not an approach channel to the Vaernes-airport, which anyway have no night flights. (The airport are about 40 km north of the city, and aircraft come from the west or directly form the south.) The light was neither on an apparent course towards the Oerlandet air force base about 60 km north-north east of the city. The light did not have the characteristics of posistioning lights on any form of aircraft I've ever seen. The hospital often get ambulance helicopters landing, but these make a lot of noice and extremely rare this late.

The light kept a steady pace, and I remember being puzzled that the light did not seem to be reflected from the few clouds,as it seemed to be bright enough to illuminate them. The properties of the light was "cold" like a neon-lamp as opposed to the "warm" light of an ordinary lightbulb. It did not seem to have any special shape, more like a radiant pinprik or singularity, if you understand me. When it seemed to reach the "Graakallen" hills (where there's a military radar station) I looked down as my cell-phone suddenly beeped, when I looked up again a half-second later the light was gone. This seemed to have neccesitated an significant acceleration. The time of the observation, 5 minutes, is based on the fact that my cigarette was just a stubb at this time and I usually use about 5-7 minutes on a smoke. I waited for about 5 minutes, but when the light failed to appear again I went home.

I didn't think to much about it when there was no other reports in newspapers etc. I had only had 1 beer that evening as I had been lending a hand during a tv-recording at the student community, and had to get up early the next morning. Had it not been for the fact that the light was clearly visible below clouds I'd probably guessed it to be a satelite or high flying plane reflecting the sun or something like that, but it was undoubtably not that high. (The cloud probably being at about 3000 feet.. (measured in regards to the Graakallen.) The weather at the time was quite crisp, about 5 degrees centigrade below freezing.

Trondheim being a quite large city, with the accompanying light pollution the light was obviously quite bright, since it was brighter that for instance the road illumination on the opposite side of the river valley. (Trondheim being situated along the Nidelven river, where this exits a glacial valley into the sea) I was located at the lower part of the eastern side of the valley. Hope the sighting might be of interest to you. I've seen lights i couldn't identify before, but this somehow seemed different. And I must beg your apology, feeling that the report might have been more precise had I made a written record of it the same evening.

((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date is approximate. We will invite him to attempt to confirm the date, since it was so recent a sighting. PD))