Glowing spiral over Norway

I am in serious danger of becoming the sort of blogger who just links to other people's blogs or online articles. Not that that's a bad thing - there's a lot of good, cool, and interesting stuff I'm reading out there that I'd like to share. (Actually, Blogger has a "Blog This" function that I suppose I could be using. Hmmm...)

Anyway, here's something from Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy website about a mysterious glowing spiral that appeared over northern Norway early on the morning of December 9, 2009. Clicking on the image above takes you to the original Norwegian article (in Norwegian) with a larger version of the picture, and Phil's article has more images and links. The most likely explanation for this is that it is from a failed rocket launch, possibly from Russia, spiraling and venting exhaust.

A few - OK, more than twenty years ago, my father told me about a strange glowing, swirling cloud he saw in the night sky. Later that week I was talking with a girl with whom I was having a long-distance relationship and she mentioned to me that she had also seen something very much like this at about the same time. As she lived about 100 miles to the West, I realized that whatever they both had seen had to be pretty high up in the atmosphere. A few days later a small article in the newspaper noted that people all over the Eastern seaboard had reported seeing this, and it was just part of a Russian (well, Soviet Union) rocket launch that had gone up at an unusual time on an unusual trajectory, which is why such things hadn't been noticed during previous launches.

It's very unusual, very beautiful, rare but not unheard-of. If anyone reading this happens to be from Norway or thereabouts, please let me know if you witnessed this personally.


See also:
Strange 'Norway spiral' likely an out-of-control missile - space - 10 December 2009 - New Scientist