Article/Document:

Hessdalen Lights

Flavio Gori

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Summary: Peder Skogaas, a 65 Hessdalen inhabitant, tell me that in the beginning persons reporting those lights decided to remain silent with people outside the valley to not appear to be lunatic.

Hessdalen is a small valley in the centre-east side of Norway, around 30 km north from the Roros town and 118 km south from Trondheim, close to the Sweden border. You can find it about 63° 78' North and 11°17' East. It runs around a north/south direction for about 15 km long and 3 km wide.

There are mountains in the east, Rognefjell in the northern part, then Stordalshogda and further south lies Ratvollfjellet. These mountains are between 917 and 995 metres above sea level. In the west, lies the mountain of Finnsaahoegda in the north, then Fjellbekkhogda, Baatjornhogda, and in the south is the mountain Rohovda. These mountains are between 1063 and 1088 metres above sea level. South of the valley there are two lakes, Herssjoen in the east and Oyungen in the west. No more than150 people are living there and likely all of them are well aware about those strange lights that arising from nothing since about WWII times or earlier. I tried to have good relations with norwegian people living there. Fortunately they are so kind and also like talk to us.

Peder Skogaas, a 65 Hessdalen inhabitant, tell me that in the beginning persons reporting those lights decided to remain silent with people outside the valley to not appear to be lunatic. Later lights were getting so high in number that was not possible hides the phenomenon.
Lights appear to be extremely exotic: blue, green, white, yellow, red; they usually run random, sometime very fast (in the 1984 Mission was calculated one light running at about 30.000 km/h), or slow, until remains still for minutes. The laser beam made it change behaviour so that the flashing frequency dobbled. It did not change color or direction, though someone have said, prior to the 1984 Mission, that the light disappeared when a strong light beam was directed to it.

Therefore, as often happen, many people went there. Someone giving very personal way to explain lights, someone using the scientific one. Between this last one Erling Strand , an electronic engineer since 1988 at Ostfold College in Sarpsborg, south of Oslo.

His first technical report was done in 1984 and can be read here.
After that work, many international scientists approached the valley and its lights. One more norwegian electronic engineer , Bjorn Gitle Hauge, was in and is still on the work. Moreover an American researcher, David Fryberger from Stanford University, who proposed a highly technical theory called the magnetic monopole to investigate the phenomena.

Other technical theory to explain the Hessdalen Phenomena (H.P.) are the geophysical, or the solar connection. It is important to underline that one russian Physics researcher four times in the Nobel Prize "podium", Boris Smirnov, has been in the valley reporting the possibility that in the Hessdalen Phenomena may arise a brand new Physics.

Solar phenomena connected with the optical situation is supported by an Italian scientist who was between the very first researchers to go in the Norwegian valley to directly realise what was going on. This man is Massimo Teodorani a PhD in Astro Physics who went there in 1994 for the first time and then held a lot of speech about the argument, both in Italy and in Norway. His talking bring in the H.P. research more Italian scientists and researchers such as Stelio Montebugnoli, Jader Monari, Andrea Cremonini, Flavio Gori, Marco Poloni and Simona Righini to say just the ones in the EMBLA2001 Summer Mission. Between them, you can find physics as well as astronomers and electronic engineering. Most of them are working in the Radio Observatory in Medicina, close to Bologna (Central Italy).

During the last years, the Italian and the Norwegian groups developed a lot of theoretical and on the field work, involving radio science in so many ways.

The Very Long Frequency (VLF) as well as the MicroWave is doing the most part. An important on the field site to monitor the radio waves was set up in the valley, on a hill, with a metallic box installed. While in the field outside the Blue Box (just a coloured blue box) you can find 2 square antenna (each arm of 2 meters) bearing different directions, one in N/S and the other in NE/SW, as well as a dipole (each arm 50 meters covering approximately the same field.

Just in the top of the Blue Box, you can find 3 video camera that are continually monitoring the valley. One of them is devoted to take a closer control the point is found to be interested by the light eventually seen by the other cameras. Two of those cameras are mounted on a 9 meters high tower above the ground and on the top there is a radar machine, still mapping the valley searching for light emissions connection.
Inside the Blue Box we can find a computer continually showing the video camera view just upside and one more camera sited in a remote location about 350 meters from the Blue Box in a higher geographical position able to see a different perspective and a wider angle. These two camera viewing are visible on the Internet when an alert appear and you can see at this site:

http://www.hessdalen.org/station/alarm_new.shtml.

Still inside you can find a magnetometer (not in a PC alert-system right now) and the E.L.F.O. receiver, a VLF/ELF (Extremely Low Frequency Observer) who can monitor all the electromagnetic situation in a band between 16 kHz down to 1 kHz, where a filter was put to cut off the 50 Hz and its harmonics noise. ELFO is also a dedicated software created to run with the ELFO receiver that is usually connected with the two square antennas. ELFO system can monitor one of the two antennas or in the correlation way. To better understand how ELFO system was engineered and how it is working, will be avaliable later from our site.
The Blue Box is a very interesting place to operate during day and night, no matter how weather can be, though not so much large such as no more than two persons can work at the same time with enough space to move inside. Two persons are anyway enough to manage the electromagnetic waves and the optical situation.

Usually the persons inside the Box are working with other people on the field looking for optical view by eyes, telescope, CCD video camera and still video camera as well as portable VLF receiver connected to a Powerbook computer, recording in digital way directly, for further analysis. Most of the times these recording sessions were done with WR-3 and Inspire VLF receivers connected to a 3400 PowerBook Apple computer. Recording software are done with SoundEdit16 software, while averaged measurement are done with MacTheScope spectrum analyser, usually set on 4096 averaged way. A look at these screens is spectrogram in Figure 1, while an averaged spectrum analyser is in Figure 2.

The Blue Box recording session are done (acquisition and recording) by the ELFO system, though the above Apple related system was in use in a parallel way with ELFO. This was possible because the two output from ELFO: the audio (to the PowerBook) and the USB port (to ELFO software in a portable Compaq Armada).

The way to put the VLF system in the Internet is under development. When system will be ready, the VLF team will be able to analyse audio file from their respective location also during seasons when they will be unable to reach the site, without loose any data. Moreover, the possibility to collect VLF data with the optical data will still be in.
In the 2001 campaign, the VLF team was trying to recognise the standard VLF noise situation in the valley during summertime. In our opinion this is a very important step to realise what is of real manmade origin (and has to be put out) as well as what is of known natural origin, such as whistlers, tweeks and the like. In this way we could understand such signals and let the software cut them off automatically, letting us see just what is of different (or unknown) origin. When this kind of software will be possible (when all known signals will be sampled in a totally mathematically known way), the VLF group will be able to work in a lighter (absolutely not easy, anyway) way, but until then the big amount of data to see, hear, sample and analyse will be the normal situation for the everyday working life of the typical VLF researcher and will be this way until we can reach the wanted aknowledge. A second software/hardware system might to be used to cut off all those extremely powerful sounds and it is one or more filters working togheter to simply cut off all signals over a given amplitude threshold. In this case, software has not to realise what kind of signal it is arriving. It simply has to recognise if that signal is higher than a given threshold: if so do not process and cut away, if its less than that threshold, then have to keep that emission. Likely its a kind of signal we like monitor. Of course this is based on a bet, or, better, a hypothesis: lights are emitting in a very low amplitude way. It has to be proven yet. In parallel way should work a no-filtered system that should shows any influence by lights as soon as they appear in the optical region.

An Internet connection will help us to understand the normal VLF situation everyday in all the seasons. We believe such a thing as an invaluable help.

When the normal situation will be a reality, we could be able to understand if and when anything is coming across the valley to influence the normal situation, also including when (or just before and how much before) a light appear. In some theory, lights are thinking to be a globe of self-contained energy bags (SCEB) that suddenly is going to emit such energy for still unknown reasons. We are working on the idea that, though invisible, such SCEB can create an influence in the local electromagnetic field that may be detected by our VLF instruments set. That is why VLF team and the optical one have to work in close connection, especially just in time to fit the respective observation perfectly.

In order to better understand the standard VLF situation in the valley and eventually how and when this standard may be influenced by exotic particles, writer proposed two items: first one is devoted to establish a balloon site flying no less than 400/500 meters high on the area we want to monitor, in parallel way with a ground based station. This may be a good help to realise if and when something may change in the lower ionosphere floor, especially if and when charged electrons will be present in the given floor and where (should be fantastic if we also understand: why) these particles are originated, beside to realise if and what may vary between ground and in higher altitude receiving station in the same time.

In the second proposal more receiving stations have to be established both on the ground and in the ionosphere in different (though close to the primary site, say the valley just beyond the Hessdalen valley-hill) geographical sites to compare these recording with the ones done in the Hessdalen valley, in order to understand if a VLF situation is the same or different in any way from the other. Therefore, we could store important data to better fit the real VLF situation in more than one place/altitude (with different air condition/composition) as well as valley, in the same time and using the same instruments. If and when something very specific may arise in the Hessdalen valley only, it will be extrapolate with shape control from the software analysis. Though VLF propagation permits to cover a large geographical region with low difference, it should be possible read influences originated by very local effects, as the lights may are. A very sensitive hardware and software will help in order to discover very low amplitude signals that should be our goal.

Read more articles on this topic:

Project Hessdalen (Hessdalen Lights)