STRANGE LIGHTS OVER NORWAY

On the morning of 12/9 in Norway, people saw a strange and still-unexplained phenomenon. Eye-witness Nick Banbury of Harstad reports: "We are used to seeing lots of auroras here in Arctic Norway, but on my way to work this morning I saw something completely unexpected. Between 7:50 and 8:00 a.m. local time, there was a strange light in the sky," shown here in a photo taken by Jan Petter:

"It consisted initially of a green beam of light similar in colour to the aurora with a mysterious rotating spiral at one end," continues Banbury. "This spiral then got bigger and bigger until it turned into a huge halo in the sky with the green beam extending down to the earth. According to the press, this could be seen all over northern norway and must therefore have been very high up in the atmosphere to be seen hundreds of km apart."

"[A popular] suggestion at the moment is that it was a rocket shot up by a Russian submarine in the white sea, but the Russians deny this apparently. A big mystery indeed!"

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Got A Fix For My Firewood Addiction, And It Was Good!

The target.


On the ground and all cut up.


A little wet and cold, but I ain't no momma's boy. Makes the fire at home feel all the better.


Gotta love that old maul! Three swings makes four splits nearly every time.


All split up.


It warmed up to 30°F during the night and this morning the snow had solidified somewhat. I was able to pack the trail pretty good, but was still leery of pulling my wood trailer. It occurred to me that an old snowmobile cutter from about 1970 was propped up somewhere in the junkpile. I found it, dragged it out through the snow, and hooked it up! Worked surprisingly well. In fact, it worked so well that even though my initial intention was not to haul any wood in it but just my equipment, I ended up hauling wood with it anyway. I took it a little easy on it, because the old fiberglass is kind of brittle, and I did forget a couple times and through some splits in it pretty hard, but it survived. It's pretty beat up anyway, from many years of teenagers a long time ago.


I think the poor old thing deserves a place next to my woodhauler. At least for now.


- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Read the story before looking at the picture below!

Well, there is good news and bad news about my Christmas decorations this year

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down. First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by. Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder and almost killed herself putting it against my house; she didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.

Kind of feel like I gave in to 'the man' by taking him down but my neighbor did confirm to near miss accidents on the busy street next to my house. I think I made him too real this time...

So it was fun while it lasted!



















Thanks Matt!

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

There's too much snow!

I was able to get out into the woods, and back, but just barely. All the way was only moving at a snail's pace. I even melted a little plastic near the muffler on my ATV from working her kind of hard. There's no way I will be able to pull my wood trailer, even empty. I might be able to cut some wood, but not haul it up. I'll have more piled out there. The third year in a row that this has happened, too much snow right away in the beginning of December and then I can't cut any wood. And one thing about this area is that after it snows, it gets quite cold and then the snow won't pack/settle. It turns to a sugar-like texture that just slithers around under your wheels. Great for snowmobiling, bad for my wood cuttin' addiction.

Not exactly stuck, more of a controlled creeping.


The deer have been hittin' the turnip patch pretty hard. Can't tell from this picture, but they've got the far end dug down to the dirt. Should have planted turnips on the trails and maybe the deer would have plowed the snow off!


Skidplate dragging and wheels spinning all the way.


The thing about raspberries and hazelnuts is that in the summer the thick leaves and brush hide the available wood on the ground. Then in the winter the snow sticks to the brush and it still hides the wood!


This tree was going to be my next firewood target. I can get to it, kind of, and I can see it above the snow-cover,so maybe soon.


Nothing special about this picture, I just thought it was pretty. A future generation of white pine covered in snow.


- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

The 2009 Geminid Meteor Shower

Make hot cocoa. Bundle up. Tell your friends. The best meteor shower of 2009 is about to fall over North America on a long, cold December night.

"It's the Geminid meteor shower," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "and it will peak on Dec. 13th and 14th under ideal viewing conditions."

A new Moon will keep skies dark for a display that Cooke and others say could top 140 meteors per hour. According to the International Meteor Organization, maximum activity should occur around 12:10 a.m. EST (0510 UT) on Dec. 14th. The peak is broad, however, and the night sky will be rich with Geminids for many hours and perhaps even days around the maximum.

Cooke offers this advice: "Watch the sky during the hours around local midnight. For North Americans, this means Sunday night to Monday morning."

Researchers are interested to see what the Geminids do in 2009. The shower has been intensifying in recent decades and they wonder if the trend will continue.

Geminids are pieces of debris from a strange object called 3200 Phaethon. Long thought to be an asteroid, Phaethon is now classified as an extinct comet. It is, basically, the rocky skeleton of a comet that lost its ice after too many close encounters with the sun. Earth runs into a stream of debris from 3200 Phaethon every year in mid-December, causing meteors to fly from the constellation Gemini: sky map.

When the Geminids first appeared in the late 19th century, shortly before the US Civil War, the shower was weak and attracted little attention. There was no hint that it would ever become a major display.

But now it has. "The Geminids are strong—and getting stronger," says Cooke.

What's going on? Jupiter's gravity has been acting on Phaethon's debris stream, causing it to shift more and more toward Earth's orbit. Each December brings a deeper plunge into the debris stream.

Meteor expert Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario (UWO) says the trend could continue for some time to come. "Based on modeling of the debris done by Jim Jones in the UWO meteor group back in the 1980s, it is likely that Geminid activity will increase for the next few decades, perhaps getting 20% to 50% higher than current rates."

A 50% increase would boost the Geminids to 200 or more meteors per hour, year in and year out. "That would be an amazing annual display," says Cooke.

Moreover, says Brown, "the proportion of large, bright Geminids should also increase in the next few decades, according to Jones' model." So the Geminids could turn into a "fireball shower."

Brown cautions that "other models of the debris stream come to different conclusions, in some cases suggesting that Geminids will decrease in intensity in the coming decades. We understand little about the details of the formation and evolution of Phaethon's debris despite many years of efforts."

Recent trends favor a good show. Enjoy the Geminids!

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China: Secret Pilot UFO file released

A detailed UFO report of an incident involving a commercial pilot that includes radar images and recordings of the conversation between the pilot and the airport tower has just been made public in China. The report was released at a scientific forum held in Shanghai.
The event occurred on March 18 in the morning in Shanghai. Later that day hundreds of readers rang a local newspaper ‘The Xinmin Evening Times’ to report a strange object they had seen in the sky. One of these callers was the Tower Manager at Hongqiao Airport, Mr Jin Xin. He mentioned that a UFO had been spotted by tower staff and picked up by radar and that he had the recording.
Mr Jin Xin added that he requested that a pilot due to take off at exactly the same time chase the object and the pilot, who agreed, had reported that the UFO, seemingly made of two parts, was circling around his plane. A transcript of the conversation between the pilot and tower control has also been preserved.
The pilot witnessed the UFO for no less than 9 minutes and described the UFO in the conversation with the tower as initially a glowing fireball displaying extraordinary flight characteristics and quickly shifting position before ‘Descending sharply, changing colour from red to black and then separating into two objects: The top one a sphere, the bottom a rectangle. The craft travelled in a Northeast direction at level flight before climbing and disappearing.’
The pilot, Mr Zhu Zhaoyuan , was highly experienced at the time and was flying for Jinan Airlines. The aircraft he was flying was small commercial plane.
A number of UFO research societies were asked to investigate this event as well as scientists. Professor Wang Sichuao of Nanjing’s Purple Mountain Observatory (Of the July Eclipse UFO fame) thinks that this was an extraterrestrial encounter while the custodian of the recording, Mr Jialu Wu, an ex-engineer at the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute and now director of the Shanghai UFO research centre believes the UFO was in fact two airplanes misidentified by the pilot.

In the process of releasing this astonishing file, a researcher from the Purple Mountain Observatory, Mr Liu Yan, revealed that the institution had investigated many thousands of UFO reports received from the public. According to Mr Yan, 90 percent of such sightings are eventually identified.

Chinese Ufologists have observed that this figure still leaves a lot of genuine UFOs that have been seen above China.


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After The Storm

On the radio they were calling it the "Storm of the Decade" and saying the old timers couldn't remember a worse one. I say bologna! We've had much worse storms than this, even as recently as last year and the year before. We only got a foot of snow. We've gotten way more than that in a single storm before. The wind has blown harder. The drifts have been bigger. And the temperature has been way colder. I think the old timers are suffering from memory loss.

It's supposed to warm up a little this weekend and maybe I can start packing some of the trails in the woods. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Snowflakes!


The woodstack that I'm currently burning from.


The plow truck going by, again.


And right behind the plow truck is the pulp truck. The loggers have a little bit bigger equipment than I do so they can still work in the woods!


I'm sure everybody recognizes this, you've seen it pictured hundreds of times, my wood hauling trailer. Looks pretty sad right now, sitting there doing nothing.


The beginning of the trail into the woods, and at this time also the end. Snoopy is pointing at it, as if shaking a finger to scold it, but the white obstacle still won't go away.


Some of my overflow woodstacks.


And a few more stacks of excess firewood.


And a very depressed-looking balsam fir.


- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Tips before and after you see a UFO

1. If you see a UFO keep your head.
The problem with seeing a UFO is the event becomes so startling that the witnesses are not using their heads. They forget they have the means, in many instances, to prove the event really happened. I met a scientist on a cruise once. He had one previous experience. He told me once he witnessed "shiny spheres" shooting along the highway in front of his car. His wife and family didn't believe him. We became friends and he started to delve into UFOs. Now he is a strong supporter of the realities of UFOs. About 6 months after we met the whole family was in their car when they had a daylight sighting. His wife and family no longer doubts him. He called me on the phone right after the sighting. The important point here is they had a video camera and photo camera in the car but the shock of what he saw gave him total "UFO amnesia" and he forgot he had them. Photos and video are important, but nothing beats independent witnesses with their own evidence. So, if you see people watching the same object it would be very smart if you could exchange phone numbers with them, or at least get their numbers.

2. Write down all the information you can about the sighting before you report it.
Jot down all the specifics: the more detailed the better. Make sketches of the object: color, size, shape, and movement. Include also an estimate of the degree position the object in relation to the horizon and also compass directions. If it's at night take notes of any stars or planets near your sighting. Many phones now have compasses and make it possible to go on the web. You can use them to find not only the positions of the stars and planets, but also satellites, their times and positions.

3.
Never lie or embellish your UFO sighting.
You never know how important your sighting will become and there are people out there in media just waiting to discredit you. If you think they are stupid you'd be making a big mistake. One of the great witnesses to Roswell known as the "Mortician" lied about names of the nurse and his story changed over the course of time. Although his original statement had been repeated many times in the town years before any publicity, his inconsistencies were fodder for the skeptics. It is perfectly understandable if a person wishes to hold back certain aspects of the sighting till that person is comfortable with his/her investigator. For years ranchers never spoke of seeing landed disk and entities, even though now they claim they had witnessed them during times of mutilations. They claimed they withheld that information because if they had said anything people would have thought they were crazy. Hey, you know something… they're right. My strong suggestion, in that case, is to be upfront with the investigator right away. State your position as plainly as possible; that you are not comfortable with sharing everything at this time. This will save you a great deal of grief if you decide to reveal it later on. I say this as a student of UFO history; it is the best way to go.


4.
Report your sighting.
MUFON is the best place to report your sighting. They have some great field investigators and they have a much better system of tracking the progress of a case. As far as MUFON getting back to you quickly, the more MUFON investigators in your area the better chance you have of your case being looked at quickly. The other place to report a sighting is the National UFO Reporting Center. Although NUFORC will take your sighting they don't investigate. They will, however, notify MUFON if a report looks very interesting and or is part and parcel to other UFO sightings in the same area (flap).


5. There is a big secret in UFO history.
In the beginning of UFO investigations if witnesses claimed multiple sightings at different times, that person would have been considered too far out to be of interest. That has changed tremendously. Many of our researchers now know people do indeed have multiple sightings. The point here is you may want to go back to the same area the next night (most of these types of recurrences happen at night) or, in those rare instances, the next day. If the sighting was at night, go a little earlier and take pictures of the area in the daytime concentrating on any objects in the area: trees, hills, and manmade structures. If you can measure the distances to these markers of course that would help. Your trip will not be wasted even if you don't see anything.

6.
Reporting a UFO publically can be dangerous to your career.
I am not self righteous enough to tell people to endanger their career over a UFO sighting. If you're involved with government contracts, or any place where "they" can hurt you or damage your career, don't give your name. I suggest you report the sighting anonymously with MUFON. MUFON will keep your anonymity. Anonymity is one of the pillars of MUFON. Simply put they can be trusted and in their training (which I took) they stress the importance of maintaining anonymity when requested. Why even report it if it's anonymous? Your report may bring other people out of the "UFO closet." This may mean they also report their sighting confirming what you saw. Believe me you will feel better if other people witnessed what you witnessed.


7.
Look out for the media.
The reality of the world is the media will try to trivialize your report. If your experience ends up bringing attention and you are interviewed, they usually bring debunkers on after you are interviewed. Try and counter in your initial interview the objections to your case these skeptics may make. Example: if Jupiter or another planet was close to the same area of the sky as your object mention that, because, you can be sure, if you don't, they will… In other words ,cover all your bases. If you have any professional standing that could lend credibility to your sighting, mention it ( if you can). If you are allowed to counter the skeptic, challenge any ridiculous statement they may have made, (there usually some) and keep your head; USUALLY, DEBUNKERS KNOW LESS THAN YOU ABOUT UFOS. Don't be intimidated, they are bluffing.


8. Getting money for your experience has it's headaches.
Suppose you have that rare UFO experience so profound, and well substantiated, it receives a thorough investigation with even the possibility of a book deal. What should you do? Obviously in this illustration the investigation went well for the person, in other words concrete independent evidence that something did happen. Now, it gets complicated. People may push you and pull you all kinds of ways. I suggest you remember why you reported your experience(s) in the first place…it was probably a selfless act. Stay true to that integrity above all else, in your testimony, and even with the lure of more money. If you do this you will certainly be in good standing with the UFO community. You can bank on that.

9.
What happens if you are asked to speak at some UFO conferences?

That of course is up to each and every person to decide. I can tell you what I have observed at conferences. The support for well documented cases is phenomenal. Each one of them is perceived by most of the UFO community, as a break in the wall against humanity's ignorance. There are some people in our community that seem to have their own agenda, whatever the hell it is. These people will question any human weakness you have. This type of unfairness doesn't go unchallenged with most of the UFO community; they will support you in every way.


Is it worth it? The strongest evidence we have points to Extra Terrestrial Vehicles. They have continually monitored the Second World War, our nuclear buildup and our trips in space. They have even shot down missiles. At this very moment they are being witnessed and recorded all over the world. We've had an American hero who walked on the moon stating emphatically and publically that ETs are here. When UFO craft and its occupants turn out to be a public reality your UFO experience will take on a significance you could hardly have dreamed of.


Above all else, people of the world, report UFOs because knowledge is power.

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meteor shower is underway

The Geminid meteor shower is underway the next few nights. The Moon isn't around to interfere, so it should be a good display. The shower will peak on Sunday night, but a few stray meteors are visible for several nights before and after the peak.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

ATV Tire and width restrictions change

A recently enacted state law changes the tire and width restrictions for all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) operating in Wisconsin. The new law defines an all-terrain vehicle as an engine-driven device that:

* has a net weight of 900 pounds or less;
* is originally manufactured with a width of 50 inches or less;
* is equipped with a seat designed to be straddled by the operator; and
* is designed by the manufacturer to travel on three or more low-pressure tires.

A low-pressure tire is defined as a tire that has a minimum width of 6 inches and that is designed to be inflated with an operating pressure not to exceed 10 pounds per square inch as recommended by the manufacturer.

“The main changes were expanding the maximum width from 48 inches to 50 inches and the removal of any rim size restrictions,: said Gary Eddy, ATV administrator for the state Department of Natural Resources. “ATVs such as the Polaris Sportsman XP, can now be legally registered.”

Along with changes to the tire and width restrictions, the law changes also includes making it illegal to modify an ATV so that it is wider than 50 inches and to operate an ATV equipped with other than low pressure tires.

“This law change does not apply to utility-type vehicles or side by sides as these vehicles are not equipped with a seat designed to be straddled by the operator,” Eddy said.

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