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    24
    Apr

    The Hessdalen Phenomena: Interview of Ass. professor Erling Strand (Norway)

    ReplyBlog, NewsApril 24th, 2012Philippe

     As this week I will atttend the EGU (European Geosciences Union annual conference)  in Vienna and meet the Hessdalen Norwegian researchers, I thought that it was the perfect time to post this interview of Erling Strand. (all articles’ photos are courtesy of Project Hessdalen, Erling Strand and Bjorn Gitle Hauge)

     

    The Hessdalen Phenomena (HP) are transient luminous phenomena which is observed in the low atmosphere over the Hessdalen valley in Norway. The phenomenon, still unexplained, appears like a glowing light ball with dimensions ranging from decimeters up to 30 meters. Since the mid of 1980’s, camera  observations and data measurements have given qualitative and quantitative observations which complement the observations reported by Hessdalen valley inhabitants. Ass. Professor Erling Strand works at the Østfold University College (Norway) as a teacher in the Department of Information Technology. He has a master degree in electrical engineer from the University of Trondheim and studied physical electronics and telecommunications. He is one of the founders of what is called “Project Hessdalen” (HP) (Website:http://www.hessdalen.org/), a project that has been dedicated to studying this unexplained phenomena. In addition, Erling is also the European representative of the Society for Scientific Exploration. Having had the pleasure to meet him recently (and I will see him this week at the 2012 European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, I took the opportunity to ask him the latest HP news:

     

    1/ Some scientists remain skeptical about the existence and significance of the HP phenomena. What do you reply to them? There are very few of such scientists left. There have been so much documentation of the phenomena during the years, so I tell them to be more updated.

     

    2/ You participated for the first time last April to an European Geosciences Union General Assembly. Could you tell if this proved to be beneficial and what kind of feedback you received? I haven’t seen any directly beneficial so far, but in general it is important to inform people at the Geosciences Union about the phenomena. Journalists do contact me often. I don’t ask the journalists where they got the info from. Lately it could have been due to my participation on the EGU, – but that is just speculations.

     

    3/ 27 years after the first field investigation in Hessdalen (http://www.hessdalen.org/reports/hpreport84.shtml), what has been learnt on the Hessdalen Phenomena? It is difficult to say this in a short term. We know that there are many different types of the phenomena, and they are capture on radar. – An answer on your question could be part in a book.

     

    4/ Do you have any information on the possible frequency of apparition of the UP phenomena; i.e. what were the declared sightings records of the last five years? And is the Hessdalen Valley the only location in Norway where this kind of phenomena is reported? The data of observations the last 5 year is no good. The only good data source is the amount of observations done during the Science Camp’s, which takes place during one week, each year. There have been observations on all these Science Camp.

     

    5/ Beside the three main types of HP (i.e. white or blue flashed; big yellow lights, several lights together); could you tell us more about the others kinds of sightings that are reported? Could provide a recent testimony for illustrating this? These three different types consists each of many different types of lights. For instance “big yellow light”, can have many different shapes, lifetime, moving behavior etc. There are also some types which does not fit into any of these “big” boxes. There are daylight observations, which are not a light. But there are very few of such sightings. It can be different solutions to all of these types of phenomena.

     

    6/ Last year collaboration was initiated with the GEIPAN and some French research institutes, could you update us on the current status of this partnership and if some results, data have been obtained from the new equipments installed (electric field and infrasound)? The French institutes have installed instruments in Hessdalen, which continuous record data. They measure electrical and magnetic fields. Whenever observations are done in Hessdalen, it is possible to find out if there have been any unusual magnetic or electrical recordings. The data from these instruments need to be collected manually. They are not on the internet.

     

    7/ In order to acquire more data on the HP and come up with a final theory and explanation, what do you think would need to be done? What instruments would be needed and what kind of logistic would be ideal? If founding had been present, we could find a solution. There are no people working full time on this now. I would build logistics on the data, with a main database. There should be better mapping of different physical properties in the Hessdalen valley. There should have been camera recordings in the IR, UV and the visual. A good radar system. Better reporting system. More cameras, so 3D mapping of the phenomena could have been done.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    8/ In 2009 Billionaire Robert Bigelow made a significant donation to the American Ufological association MUFON for supporting a rapid response team that would quickly reach the destination of a high-level UFO event. In the case of the Hessdalen Phenomena, how can you persuade some potential investors to provide some funding or others relevant resources? Why is it important to study the HP? Finding the solution of the HP will give new info about our world. It could be groundbreaking knowledge, because so far the HP does not seems to fit into a known part of our world. Such possible groundbreaking news about our world is important. How important is difficult to say before we know it. Could there be a new energy source? Could this energy source be used so that there will be no need for any fossil fuels? Or maybe even more important info could be achieved.

     

     

     

     

     

    9/ In a recent interview, you have stated that “…you have had several daytime observations, where you have seen flying discs, etc…”Even if not related to the HP, could you please provide more details on such sightings? I have had only three daytime observations, so the word “several” is wrong. I have however seen several unexplainable “things”, – such which goes into another category than HP or ufo. Two of those three observations was a flying disc. The third was a “black hole”. I did not get the impression that I was looking onto a black object, it was more like a hole into something completely black. This “black hole” changed size all the time.

    Thanks Erling for this interview and you success with your Project Hessdalen

    This entry was posted on Apr 24th, 2012 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Blog, News.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can Leave a response, or Trackback.

    12 Responses to “The Hessdalen Phenomena: Interview of Ass. professor Erling Strand (Norway)”

    • http://www.reddit.com/r/UAP/
      May 10, 2012 at 2:31 pm

      Hi, thank you for posting this. Can you please provide some information on the last photograph?

      Many thanks

    • http://www.reddit.com/r/UAP/
      May 10, 2012 at 2:50 pm

      Hi Phillipe,

      Also, if you haven’t seen some simple analysis of the third photo in the article, I thought you might be interested. It might also be worthwhile bringing it to Erling’s attention should you ever communicate with him. Here is the basic analysis:

      http://i.imgur.com/rLBtj.jpg
      http://i.imgur.com/J44dB.jpg

      And the source:
      http://eo.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/i6de2/ama_i_am_project_manager_of_the_project_hessdalen/c219r1q

      Of course, this doesn’t discredit the Hessdalen phenomenon (or what might transpire to be phenomena), but I believe it’s unwise to use a photograph that might have a prosaic explanation for the apparent anomalies.

      Finally, thanks again for posting the interview.

    • Philippe
      May 12, 2012 at 3:21 pm

      Thanks for this interesting information and your analysis. I fully agree that we shall not confuse the issue with prosaic phenomena. Indeed I will bring it to the attention the Hessdalen researchers (Erling and Bjorn Gitle) and will obviously post their answers. If I remember correctly, this is a 30s picture that was taken in support of a footage, in company of other persons. I would then be surprised that the Moon is behind the sighting. But as I was not there, I don’t know. Hopefully I will get a feedback soon. In all cases I will follow it further and request also the footage that was taken the same night (?) during the 2007 summer camp.

    • Philippe
      May 12, 2012 at 3:22 pm

      Hello. Thanks for your interest and I will directly ask the researchers for some further information. Hopefully I will be able to answer to your question next week…

    • Hessdalen
      May 20, 2012 at 11:06 am

      It is important to know about the daylight sightings and have them as a backdrop when you consider observations of the type “lights in the sky”. Internationally Hessdalen is known as “Hessdalen lights.” I want to create a more complete picture of what has been observed, and still is being observed in Hessdalen; http://ufohessdalen.blogspot.com/

      Still it is done daylight sightings of solid, metallic objects in Hessdalen and the surrounding area. The researchers estimate the percentage of solid objects to be somewhere between 5% (Teodorani) and 15% (Strand). The remaining percentage of observations are “lights in the sky”.

      We do not know if “lights” and solid objects are two very different phenomena, or whether in fact the same phenomenon is observed under different physical stages. One can for example speculate that these objects are surrounded by ionized gas (plasma) as part of the propulsion (?) and that what appears to be lights in the sky, in reality are solid, metallic objects surrounded by ionized air (plasma)?

      In some cases, it seems to be a gradual transition from solid objects, to “plasma lights”. (“…it was surrounded with red smoke”, “…the metal had its own “glow””, “… a slightly reddish, glow above”, “… you could sort of make out a dark mass in the middle” etc.

      Other cases indicate that these are two different things.

    • Philippe
      May 26, 2012 at 4:55 pm

      Hello. as mentioned in my answer to your post, I have asked my Norwegian colleagues and this is the feedback that I have just got back. in addition I will try to obtain the short video that was filmed the same evening…
      “…There was no moon that night, in that direction. We have a series of pictures, and you see only the stars, no moon at all in that direction. The time exposure is 30 seconds. During that time all stars etc in the sky will make a short “track” in the picture, due to movement of the earth. What is said is the moon echo is the light from the station at mount Finnså.”

    • UAPreddit
      May 29, 2012 at 4:47 pm

      Thank you for consulting your Norwegian colleagues. Answering some of the quote:

      “…There was no moon that night, in that direction. We have a series of pictures, and you see only the stars, no moon at all in that direction.”

      I agree, as did the person who authored the links I posted.

      “The time exposure is 30 seconds. During that time all stars etc in the sky will make a short “track” in the picture, due to movement of the earth.”

      Yes, obviously.

      “What is said is the moon echo is the light from the station at mount Finnså.”

      Ah, this is excellent. As I mentioned before, I think the photo has its merits, but because of the considerable movement of the camera during the exposure, it contains artefacts that may be misleading unless explained. That’s why I think the photo should be presented with a legend/description when used.

      Many thanks for responding. Again, this is a great site.

    • abdellaoui yaacine
      October 2, 2012 at 10:50 pm

      hello, I watch the live stream from Hessdalen, and I was able to make some observations:

      Of the 2.10.2012 10:17 p.m. 10:21 p.m. mn one has a white light crossing the horizon from left to right on the cam # 2 and something very interresting 11:31 p.m. has a large circular light had shine on a large part of the valley some during seconds. Someone could confirm to me that I saw please thank you

    • Chris Mason
      November 23, 2012 at 1:14 pm

      Have any of the observations at Hessdalen been taken through an infra-red filter?
      If so is it possible to see and compare then with images taken without the infra-red filter?

    • Philippe
      November 29, 2012 at 10:46 am

      Thanks for your interest and comment. I have just received the following feedback from the Norwegian researchers:
      ”…We have not used infra-red filter. We want to do, and we want to cover more of the UV as well. Hopefully that will be possible one day…In 1984 and 1985, we had an IR viewer, but it was not in operation when any of the HP was there.”

    • H
      January 10, 2013 at 1:17 am

      Akkurat hva du beskriver på dokumentaren din har jeg selv opplevd, dog over Porsgrunn når jeg var yngre. Det hele startet med en lyskule som seilte over Hydro en sen kveld. Det hele varte i en god stund før det begynte å blinke,men det som er veldig veldig rart er at det delte seg i to for det i ubeskrivelig fart dro av sted til hver sin kant. Jeg er nå ca 10 år eldre og kommer aldri til å glemme den rare opplevelsen…

    • The Hessdalen Phenomena: Interview of Ass. professor Erling Strand (Norway) | ufo-tv.com says:
      April 24, 2012 at 11:09 pm

      […] are transient luminous phenomena which is observed in the low atmosphere over the Hessdalen […] UFO updates Posted in UFO's in the news | Tags: ass, Erling, Hessdalen, interview, norway, phenomena, […]

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