UFO. Norway

13 July 1986, 00:50 – Torpo, Ål, Hallingdal The night between Saturday and Sunday, July 12-13, 1986, the married couple Tova and Torfinn Tonning, together with their son Christer and some friends, were enjoying the fine Nordic summer night. The location was the Breiset Mountain Farm near Torpo in Hallingdal. Suddenly, at 00:50, they realized that Mrs. Tonning was staring out the window, and asked why she was so astonished. She said: Look at the light up there! Now it has ascended from the horizon and moved across two crossbars in the window! They all moved outside the house, and Torfinn Tonning could finally use his video camera after having battery problems. With the camera fixed on the car roof, he directed the lens towards the phenomenon, which was located in an east/northeast direction somewhere in the distance. In addition to using the camera they also had the time to observe the phenomenon with a pair of 12x binoculars. With it, they could observe clearly discernible details. The object looked oval at the top and bottom. Three clearly separable circular lights were situated in the middle. The object appeared to be illuminated by the three lights, which had a blue-white color. Simultaneously, Mr. Tonning observed some flashes of light coming downwards to the ground from the object. 10 to 12 flashes could be seen in each burst, evenly distributed in time. These blinks resembled those of a flashgun. Furthermore, the object spewed out rapid sparks of light on each side; this particular phenomenon being especially clear and distinct. An important feature regarding the object’s movement, is the tilting at an angle of approximately 45° (with both sides alternately shifting position), together with the apparent maneuvering towards and away from the witnesses. Moreover, ups and downs, more or less combined with sideway sliding, altogether gave a complicated pattern of movement. After some time, it descended to a hill, permitting both the object and parts of the landscape to be visible in the same video frame (although this feature couldn’t be recognized in the subsequent analysis). After a short while it ascended so abruptly that Mr. Tonning was unable to keep pace with his camera. Gradually, Mr. Tonning became aware of a second object just as he and the others were observing the first one. The latter was located just opposite the first, in a west/southwest direction, and had a stronger (i.e. more color-saturated) red-white hue. However, because this object seemed to be at a much greater distance (it was considerably fainter), the appearance on the video was of a rather limited duration and quality. It was observed for a relatively short time, leaving the witnesses to study the first object more closely. The video film lasts for about 10 minutes. The actual observation lasted to around 3 o’clock, i.e. for more than two hours. Both objects disappeared at a great speed at an angle to the horizon. Before disappearing, the main object became smaller and smaller, thus indicating a gradual withdrawal along the line of sight. When Mr. Tonning replayed the videotape on his recorder at home, he was rather disappointed at first. The image of the phenomena captured by his camera didn’t appear quite as impressive as the actual observation through binoculars. The video camera was equipped with a zoom lens with 6x magnification. However, when using the recorder’s stationary image option, many of the details became visible again. Weather conditions were fairly good; a cloud base at 1,500-2,500 meters, varying in extent from 1/8 (almost clear sky) during the evening of July 12th to 8/8 (completely overcast) on the morning of July 13th. Visibility was 75 km or more. Early in 1987, the video was sent to William Spaulding’s Ground Saucer Watch, in the United States, via Australian ufologist Paul Norman. GSW reported that there were no reference points in the video and also that there appears to be little ‘object’ movement. The motion is attributable to camera movement caused by the photographer. At one portion of the filming the ‘object’ is partially obscured. This could be attributable to clouds moving in front of the ‘UFO’, and finally that the anomalous light streak is evaluated as a video artifact. The obscuring of the light is consistent with the weather conditions. At midnight, the planet Jupiter was rising in the east, reaching 19° in the SE by 03:00. Directly opposite (180°) was the star Arcturus, descending from 32° at midnight to 10° at 03:00. The apparent magnitude of Jupiter was -2.62, while the apparent magnitude of Arcturus was -0.07. We consider the whole sighting to be compatible with the apparition of the planet Jupiter (the first object, the object filmed on the videotape) and Arcturus (the second object, observed visually only).