Yellowknife (Jul 07/06) - A mysterious slow-rising "missile" was photographed near Yellowknife airport on June 14, tracing a thick smoke column.

Phil Murray, a local heavy-machinery mechanic with a bachelor's degree in science, photographed the object after being roused out of bed by a friend.

This mysterious "missile" was photographed in Yellowknife several weeks ago. A Transport Canada official believes it to be a Boy Scout rocket. - photo courtesy of Phil Murray

"A buddy phoned me and said 'you like taking photos of freaky stuff, check this out,'" he says.

Murray says he's confident the object was not a model rocket or stray firework.

"I followed it for a good 20 minutes - a kid's rocket would have been gone within seconds."

As it turns out, Yellowknife boys may very well be the source of this mysterious flying missile.

Steve Loutitt, acting manager of airport at Transport Canada, and several other managers sat down and looked at the photos Murray took.

Loutitt says that they believe the object in the photos is the result of a Boy Scout outing.

"Myself and one of the other managers out here looked over the photos and they appear to be the rockets that the Boy Scouts were deploying at the sandpits," Loutitt says.

The Boy Scouts were shooting them around June 14 and 15 and Loutitt says that they were aware of the exercises as the group was in contact with the air traffic control during this endeavour to ensure safety.

Philippe Morin and Emily Watkins
Northern News Services

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Arctic Sasquatch?

Aklavik (Oct 04/04) - Aklavik residents are scratching their heads after several very large and unidentifiable footprints were found outside the community last month.

Described as human-like, the large footprints were found about three to four feet apart from each other. They were discovered in mid to late September about 50 kilometres northwest of Aklavik in a dried-out lakebed outside the west channel.

Mayor Billie Archie was hesitant to comment on the discovery, but said it was "no joke."

"We don't want to be put into the situation where people say it is human tracks but it is not," Archie said.

"It's something strange."

Archie said he sent several elders out to the location of the tracks, one of whom said they were neither grizzly bear or moose tracks.

"They look like big, big, big human tracks," said Archie.

Archie said it is a popular area to go for those who venture onto the land.

He said numerous people saw the tracks and photographed them.

"A lot of them were quite curious to see what they were," he said.

The tracks went partway across the dried-out lakebed and then across to the land, he said.

Rob Pascal said the tracks were found by a hunter and an elder and trapper went out to investigate.

"There is also a photograph around that shows the depth to which the track sunk in compared to other prints around it," Pascal said.

The distance between each track was too far apart to be made by a human, he said.

Pascal's brother Eugene said talk among residents of Aklavik have some believing something strange may be lurking in the hills, perhaps a sasquatch-like creature, while others are more skeptical.

"But there have been some stories in the past 10 or 20 years of something being seen in the hills," said Eugene Pascal.

Dorothy Westerman
Northern News Services

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Fire In The Sky

Yellowknife (Sep 13/02) - Was it a bird, a plane, a free falling piece of space garbage?

According to the Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre, whatever Sue Tkachuk saw in the sky Sunday evening was likely none of these, but a bona fide meteor.

Tkachuk was relaxing at home near the airport, when at about 9 p.m., she spotted a bright, burning ball of fire shooting across the horizon from her livingroom window.

"A flight was coming in, and I said to my husband, 'I bet that pilot had to have seen that burning in the sky,'" says Tkachuk.

"You can see the fire stream behind it, then all of sudden, poof, it was gone."

Yellowknifer tried to confirm Tka-chuk's sighting of a fireball with the Yellowknife Airport, but manager Michel Lafrance hadn't heard of any fireball sighting.

One of Tkachuk's neighbours also saw the meteor but could not be reached for comment.

"I'm sure the (airport) tower seen it," insists Tkachuk. "If we seen it from our livingroom window, then that plane coming in shortly after..."

Tkachuk's observation left her wondering what it was she really saw, but she strongly believes it must have been a meteor.

As it turned out, there was a confirmed report of a meteor burning in the sky at approximately 9 p.m. -- in Redwater, Alta., about 900 kilometres south of Yellowknife.

Alan Hildebrand, co-ordinator for the Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre -- yes, that is the real name -- said despite the distance between the two communities, it could have easily been the same meteor.

The Redwater sighting was reported to have been north of the community, travelling low on the horizon on a roughly east-west heading.

The centre reports only 70 fireballs a year.

"It would be no problem at all actually to see the same fireball from the two places," says Hildebrand.

"They're saying (in Redwater) it was quite north of them because it was quite low in the sky. If it's low in the sky it means it's got to be a long ways away from you."

Regardless, Tkachuk says she is just happy to see such a rare occurrence. "It was so cool."

Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

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Ice Mystery May Be Meteor

Pangnirtung (Jun 18/01) - In the middle of the ice covering Nauliniavik Lake there's a mystery that scientists and environmentalists are hard-pressed to explain.

The mystery is two large patches of jagged ice on the otherwise undisturbed lake 180 km north of Pangnirtung.

Robert Eno, one Nunavut's environmental protection officers, viewed the disturbances in April. They were discovered by fishers.

He suspects the two oval-shaped ice holes could have been caused by a meteor crashing to Earth.

A falling satellite and tidal movement have been ruled out.

"It looked like upended ice in an intertidal zone. The rest of the lake was flat as a pancake. The fisherman who found it said they'd never seen anything like it," Eno said.

There was no open water, suggesting the disturbance occurred days, even weeks, earlier.

When he was looking into the mysterious formations, Eno heard reports of a streak of light near Qikiqtarjuaq -- north of the lake in question.

It could have come from a meteor -- a chunk of space rock -- burning through the atmosphere.

"I've already got it in the back of my head this disturbance was caused by a meteor so I tend relate everything to the meteorite theory," he said.

As a rule, meteors are not Eno's department -- toxic waste and environmental hazards are. Having seen the site, though, and having brushed up on astral fallout, Eno remains on the case.

The next step is an underwater survey. The problem is funding. Not surprisingly, meteor diving expeditions are not a priority, not even with the Canada-Nunavut Geoscience office -- an office specializing in rock and physical formation exploration.

Dr. David Scott, chief geologist, said meteorites offer a rare and telling look at the universe's origins. In fact, a colleague accompanied Eno and several other government employees during their April survey.

If a meteorite surfaced in Nunavut, great, Scott said.

"Would we going fishing for it? Gosh no," he said.

Few meteors land on earth, either because they disintegrate en route or because they disappear into water (the Earth's surface is approximately 80 per cent water). Little is known about meteoric impacts on land -- even less on sea ice.

"It's fascinating. I'm still actively pursuing it, in some respects on my own time," Eno said.

"The only way to figure our what went on is to get a diver down there and even then, we may never know."

Kirsten Murphy
Northern News Services

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The Mysteries Above
Sound another secret of the Aurora

Yellowknife (Apr 18/01) - While we are concluding one of the best seasons for glimpsing the Northern lights, one mystery remains in the dark - what is the cause of the noise that occasionally accompanies the phenomenon?

Legend holds that whistling and crackling noise from Northern Lights are spirit voices that should be answered with whispers.

Problem is, so few have heard the lights make any noise that there are doubts in many circles. Despite experiments with sensitive microphones that can be compared to lost-cause searches for the Loch Ness Monster, aurora sounds have never been recorded.

Here's one good reason: the dancing lights form between 90 and 140 kilometres above Earth, where air is too thin to carry sound waves.

So is Doctor Tom Hallinan crazy? His colleagues don't think so, because the geophysics professor is a serious aurora scholar who's seen the lights from his Alaska lab countless times over a 35-year career in the North. One night he heard the sky make noise.

In the late 1960s "I was at on the Yukon River just above the Arctic Circle. I was walking outside coming back from dinner and the aurora brightened up. I was just enjoying it and then for a few seconds I heard it. It sounded like static but it was associated with what I was seeing."

Yellowknife tour guide Glen Walsh figures he's seen the Northern lights up to 500 times, but never heard them make even a peep.

"It's a great story if nothing else," is Walsh's response when asked if he believes they can make noise.

A lot of his customers ask him about the sound mystery.

Imaginary sounds

Theories explaining the phenomenon have been reduced to two. Either sounds are created closer to the ground by electrical fields creating static electricity, or the sounds are imaginary. Not real.

The second theory is explained by Jamie Jacobs of Yellowknife, who examined the mystery for a recent science fair project.

"If you're in a quiet area and you can't hear anything, your brain picks up the aurora's electrical impulses from what you see and interprets them as sound," the Grade 8 Range Lake school student said.

"It's your brain playing tricks on you."

She believes the static electricity theory "because that explains the swishing and the crackling sounds."

For her project, Jacobs e-mailed scientists at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska. Almost 90 per cent of the institute's $25 million annual budget comes from the U.S. Defense department and NASA. The Fairbanks campus is home to the world's only university-owned rocket launch.

Auroral physicist Hans Neilsen based at the university doesn't go for the brain tricks theory either.

"I think we can rule that out because it makes things complicated," the Danish-born scientist says.

He doesn't doubt colleague Hallinan's claim and other stories about the lights making noise -- although it's very rare. Hallinan said the night he heard the lights, they were brighter than he'd ever seen.

"There's no real reason to doubt the truthfulness of all those people. It's sort of like theories about UFOs," Neilsen said.

Research in Scandinavia got close to showing that sound comes from the aurora's magnetic field after it reaches the ground, but no scientific paper was published.

Neilsen and others believe objects like pine cones and other pointy objects on the ground can receive static charges from the aurora, and that's where the noise comes from. Like the static discharge that can draw a spark and pop after walking across a carpet and touching metal.

Reports have reached scientists about a wide range of sounds from rustling paper, swishing, sizzling and crackling like radio static.

It is known the lights are caused by charged hot plasma winds from the sun colliding with Earth's magnetic field, but details beyond that are sketchy, Neilsen and Hallinan agree. Combined they have over 70 years experience staring at the Northern night sky, but still has no idea of things like how the aurora forms its shapes.

It may be comforting that parts of the aurora borealis remain mysterious, but other scientists looking for a breakthrough in fusion energy are unlocking more of its secrets.

The missing link

Just last week University of Maryland researchers announced that new satellite evidence reveals how the aurora reaches Earth so quickly after getting started with a massive magnetic storm 100,000 kilometres in space. The magnetic field snaps back and unleashes tens of thousands of trapped volts towards Earth.

The missing link turns out to be special 'whistler' waves that lock onto electrons and transfer energy almost at light speed.

Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services

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Identified Falling Object
Meteor lights up North Slave sky

Yellowknife (Feb 19/01) - Dave Beckwith blinked in disbelief when a white light with a purple tail crossed the sky Feb. 10.

"I thought I was seeing things," he said.

He wasn't.

The fleeting spectacle Beckwith spotted above Yellowknife at about 9:15 p.m and visible across the North Slave region was likely a meteor, said British Columbian-based astronomer Dr. Jeremy Tatum.

The falling mass was also spotted in Fort Providence.

Fiona McGregor and her nine-year-old daughter were stopped beside Beckwith, at the same Yellowknife red light.

"We were thrilled. It looked like it went right across our windshield," McGregor said.

"It looked extremely close and couldn't have been there more than five or six seconds," she said.

Despite differing colour descriptions, Tatum is confident a "fireball" meteor, not a meteor shower, graced Northern skys. More important than colours, experts look at angles and directions when classifying celestial fallout. Canada's sprawling landscape means not all meteor sightings are recorded -- even though the astronomical chunks may fall daily "somewhere" in Canada, he said.

"An individual is lucky if he sees one in a lifetime," Tatum noted from his University of Victoria office.

The Yellowknife RCMP reportedly received "some" calls about a UFO-isque sighting, as did a radio station, the geophysical observatory (which monitors earthquake activity) and Northern News Services.

Marjorie Sandercock looked up from a book while at a Prelude Lake East cabin.

"It moved left to right in a slow arc and then it crumbled into the blackness, as if onto the lake," Sandercock said.

The "burning out" suggests the meteor dropped to subsonic speed before reaching the earth's surface.

If and where the meteor landed remains a mystery.

Kirsten Murphy
Northern News ServicesKirsten Murphy

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Strange Lights In The Sky
Gjoa Haven residents report UFOs

Gjoa Haven (Feb 05/01) - Some people who watched the sun go down last week got more than they bargained for. Some saw strange lights in the sky.

"I guess you could call it a UFO," said Joseph Aglukkaq, mayor of the hamlet.

"I thought it was a satellite moving, but it seemed awfully low. Then it started glowing brighter and brighter and then it just took off in another direction."

It was the first such experience for Aglukkaq. It was followed by a second, similar sighting. The whole affair left him feeling a bit uneasy.

"That was the first time for me. It gave me an awful feeling. I felt so small," said Aglukkaq.

"You see them on TV all the time, but you kind of doubt it. Then you see it and you feel so small. You don't get that feeling until you see the thing."

Elizabeth Hiqiniq went on the local radio after she and her daughter saw the lights.

"I started watching them to see if they would move. They started going slowly at first and then one of the lights went off," said Hiqiniq.

She said the objects were round and in the sky for quite a few minutes.

"I reported it to the Rangers right away and I phoned the cops. I was hoping they'd believe it," said Hiqiniq.

"I wasn't scared. I was just surprised to see those things up here."

RCMP Const. Christine Soucy said she received 10 different reports from community members who saw the same thing on Jan. 31.

"Many people from the community have reported they've seen these," said Soucy.

Soucy placed calls to various military officials to find out if they were conducting some sort of exercise.

Capt. Brian Martin, the public relations officer for the Canadian Forces Northern Area, said the military was not conducting any exercises in the Gjoa Haven area.

"I have absolutely no idea what they're seeing," said Martin."Our official policy is there are no UFOs."

Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

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Strange Sights
Little green men and lights in the sky

Taloyoak (Dec 04/00) - Pat Lyall has never seen any little green men traipsing about the tundra. Nor has he ever been abducted or ordered by anybody to take anybody else to his leader.

But -- and for some this will require a great leap of faith -- he has seen a genuine, bona fide unidentified flying object, more commonly known as a UFO.

"I've seen about four of them over the last 20 to 25 years," said Lyall, in a tone that dares you to laugh or doubt him.

The first sighting happened when he was on a plane two decades ago. (For those with aspersions ready to drip off your tongue, please note that several other people aboard that same plane -- including the pilots -- swear they saw it, too.)

"When we took off, we saw the lights out the window at quite a distance," said Lyall.

"The pilots radioed ahead to Cambridge Bay and asked if anybody was flying. They said there was no other aircraft. Then the lights just disappeared," he said.

Cambridge Bay resident James Eetoolook was also on that plane.

"The pilot pointed it out to us," said Eetoolook.

"It didn't scare me, but there was an eerie feeling with that light in front of us. What's going to happen to us was what I thought."

As for what beings from another planet want from people in the Kitikmeot, Eetoolook speculated it might have something to do with the abundant resources.

"Maybe it's the diamonds," he suggested.

Dennis Lyall is another of the many residents who has spotted odd sights under the Northern lights.

"It was a clear evening," said Dennis, brother to Pat.

"My wife and I watched this football shape with blue lighting going to the south and then it just shot straight up and disappeared," he said, adding that he'd learned to spend quite a bit of time gazing towards the heavens.

"I'm always on the look-out for strange lights," he said.

UFO buff and Yellowknife resident Blaine Wasylkiw said he found Northern sightings more believable than many of the other stories submitted to his Web site (www.ssimicro.com/~ufoinfo). "People in the North aren't jumping onto the whole abduction bandwagon. Their sightings just seem more honest."

Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

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