2005-02-17 - Minneapolis, MN

stable tapered vertical light in sky

Last night I got out of bed ~1:30 to fetch my girlfriend a snack (poached egg on toast; chocolate pudding). Upon returning to our bedroom I looked out the window and saw a vertical streak of light starting just above the tree line and extending perhaps 10 - 15 degrees into the sky. The streak of light started narrow, got slightly wider and brighter in the middle and then narrowed again. It was symetric both vertically and horizontally. The light was a whitish/greening/blueish color, akin to some northern lights displays I have seen. However, it did not shimmer / wave as northern lights do. It did however slowly fade and brighten repeatedly. We both watched it for about 15 minutes before going back to sleep.

The sky had a fairly uniform cloud cover. Dark spots moved accross the sky slowly, but it was not clear if these were darker clouds, or openings in the clouds exposing dark night (I suspect the latter). Regardless, the spots passed behind the light causing no change in relative brightness.

We could not judge the distance of the light.

We live in Minneapolis on Seabury Ave., which is directly on the Mississippi River. The light was about 5 degrees SE of the Prospect Park "witches hat" watertower:

(http://www.pperr.org/history/thetower.html).

Checking a map to confirm the vector, I judge the light to have been somewhere along the line running through the intersection of University Ave. / Emerald St. and the centerpoint of the University of Minnesota's School of Agriculture.

This light reminded my girlfriend of another odd light dispaly she saw years ago with a friend: three bars of stable verticle light each of which were truncated squarely on both the top and bottom.

Go figure.