The Petrozavodsk phenomenon is anomalous phenomena that occurred in 1977 in the North-West of the RSFSR. Most famous case occurred in Petrozavodsk on September 20, 1977. Hundreds of eyewitnesses describe an unidentified flying object large sizes, hovering over Lake Onega and emitting rays of yellow-golden color.
" - When leaving telephone booth on the corner of the street Antikainen and Lenin Avenue, I saw something flash... I jumped out into the middle of Lenin Avenue and saw, somewhere around the Severnaya Hotel, a strange object large size, which made no noise when moving. I only saw him from behind. It was round, light, either blue or gray. This object was moving towards Lake Onega. Of course, I was very scared, I went home, but for a long time I could not sleep.”
Petrozavodsk phenomenon. Drawing by a local artist
I first read about the Petrozavodsk phenomenon as a child in an old Soviet book found at the dacha. Recently I accidentally remembered this phenomenon and decided to write a mega-post with a bunch of interesting facts. However, a quick Google annoyed me: hundreds of articles have already been written about the phenomenon. If you wish, you can find them yourself. Nevertheless, I still managed to unearth a couple of interesting facts about the declassification of the phenomenon, which I will be happy to share with you.
It is no secret that the Petrozavodsk phenomenon caused a huge resonance in both Soviet and Western media. The whole world wondered what it was: a UFO or a secret rocket launch? Look at photos of articles from different newspapers: one, two, three.
Although the Soviet leadership denied any involvement in the Phenomenon, American magazine Science News will publish an article in 3 weeks: Soviet UFO due to secret launch. It states:
[...]
As it turned out, the phenomenon was due to the fact that in the pre-dawn hours there was a launch from a top-secret military space center located north of Moscow. Despite the fact that this base - the Plesetsk cosmodrome - was known to Western observers almost immediately after it became operational in 1966, Moscow has never acknowledged its existence.
[...]
After 3 years, the British magazine New Scientist will write an article Close encounters of a fabricated kind, in which it will also report on the launch of the secret Soviet satellite Cosmos-955 and the “jellyfish effect” caused by it. Pay attention to the map - funny. 
Funny pictures from New Scientist magazine
According to data declassified after the collapse of the USSR, it turned out that the phenomenon was indeed associated with the launch of the Kosmos-955 electronic reconnaissance satellite. Information about this satellite is posted on the official NASA website. The satellite faithfully served the country for 23 years. On September 8, 2000, it deorbited.
It is interesting that a couple of days before the launch of Cosmos-955, the Cosmos-954 satellite was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which after some time lost control and fell into Canadian territory, after which it caused radioactive contamination and an international scandal.
And also in Ukraine in 2005 they released postage stamp, dedicated to the first satellite of the Cosmos series. 
And finally, a couple of photographs of the flight of the satellite launched in Plesetsk in 2011. Photos
Exactly 39 years ago, hundreds of Petrozavodsk residents watched unexplained phenomenon, which was later nicknamed the “Petrozavodsk phenomenon”. From September 19 to 20, 1977, from approximately 4:00 to 4:10 am (Moscow time), an object was observed in the northern part of the sky over Petrozavodsk and its environs, from which rather long luminous stripes were extending, due to why he resembled a jellyfish. According to some evidence, the object was also seen in Leningrad region and Finland.
Portrayal of the Petrozavodsk phenomenon in New magazine Scientist
A huge “star” suddenly flashed in the dark sky, impulsively sending sheaves of light to the earth. This “star” slowly moved towards Petrozavodsk and, spreading out over it in the form of a jellyfish, hung, showering the city with many thin ray jets that gave the impression of torrential rain.
After some time, the ray glow ended. "Medusa" turned into a bright semicircle and resumed its movement towards Lake Onega, the horizon of which was shrouded in gray clouds. In this shroud, a semicircular gulley then formed, bright red in the middle and white on the sides. This phenomenon, according to eyewitnesses, lasted 10-12 minutes.
Lake Onega. Port
Expanding glow over Lake Onega
Director of the Petrozavodsk Hydrometeorological Observatory Yu.A. Gromov said that the nature of this phenomenon remains a mystery; workers of the Karelia meteorological service have never observed anything like this before.
The descriptions of the phenomenon are very similar to the launches of space rockets observed in the Baikonur region: for example, on the evening of December 15, 2015, the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle was observed over a huge area in several cities of Siberia. In 1977, over Petrozavodsk (or several tens of kilometers from it, but at high altitude) a rocket carrying the military satellite "Cosmos-955", launched precisely at 4:00 from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, could have flown by. This version is also supported by the fact that the phenomenon was observed in the pre-dawn hours, when high altitudes the sun had already risen, and could have illuminated the exhaust jets of the rocket, which gave the object the appearance of a jellyfish.
To date, official version is the launch of the military satellite "Cosmos-955" from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, which is located in Arkhangelsk region. It is believed that eyewitnesses mistook the launch vehicle for an unexplained phenomenon. But the most interesting thing is that the phenomenon was observed much before the rocket launch. Also, in the summer of 1978, a study by Petrozavodsk State University to determine the spatial position of the object, based on a comparison of the location of eyewitnesses and the points of the sky at which they observed it, gave an estimate of the flight height at 6 -15 km, which does not correspond to the rocket version, but cannot explain the observations in the Leningrad region and Finland (unless we assume that there were several identical objects).
The Plesetsk cosmodrome did not give any comments on this case - the military space projects at that time were strictly secret, only the time of the satellite’s launch was known.
The phenomenon on September 23-24 (3-4 days later) was reported by a number of central and local newspapers. The most complete investigation in 1977 was carried out by a researcher at the State Inspectorate, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, L.M. Gindilis with a group of colleagues.
Compiled by: L.M.Gindilis, Yu.K.Kolpakov
Introductory article by L.M. Gindilis. Moscow 1999
He collected many eyewitness accounts, contacted employees of Petrozavodsk State University. As a result, he considered the version of the rocket flight not sufficient to explain all the observed phenomena; however, the matter was complicated by disagreements in eyewitness accounts (some observed several objects, different data were given about the luminosity of the object, the direction of its movement, height, etc.)
The only photograph of the Petrozavodsk phenomenon. Copy poor quality. The original is lost
There is evidence from about 15 residents of Petrozavodsk that from October 1977 to early 1978, in the windows of their apartments located in multi-story buildings in different areas of the city, unknown reason holes appeared.
Some holes were Not correct form, some are almost perfectly round, with melted or ground edges. In house 12 on the street. Dzerzhinsky.
Scheme of glass damage according to Dzerzhinsky 12
According to the conclusion of an examination carried out in the spring of 1978, the holes appeared as a result of shots from a slingshot, a traumatic pistol or a blowgun. L.M. Gindilis did not agree with these conclusions, but denied the connection of the appearance of holes directly with the phenomena of September 20. Later, a legend appeared, fueled in 2011 by a report from the REN-TV channel, that on September 20, a UFO “scanned” the entire city with rays, and these rays left holes in the glass of hundreds of houses, which were urgently replaced by the military who flooded Petrozavodsk, but this this was not the case - there were few cases, and they were registered over 3-4 months, and not overnight; There was no military activity observed in connection with the incidents.
Unidentified flying objects were observed on the territory of Karelia in the first half of the last century, and perhaps earlier. The UFO boom came in the late 1970s. Most cases of the appearance of unidentified flying objects took place in Petrozavodsk and its environs.
On a spring evening in 1976, Petrozavodsk resident N. Baykova and her daughter watched a shining orange ball the size of the Moon through the window. After some time, the ball decreased in size three times, then again reached its previous size. He hung motionless over Sulazhgora for about an hour and a half. Then he disappeared.
September 20, 1977 is the date of the famous Petrozavodsk phenomenon. At about four o'clock in the morning, a huge object appeared above the city, first taking the form of a jellyfish, from which ray streams flowed down like torrential rain, and then turning into a bright semicircle and moving towards Lake Onega.
Later, journalists and scientists tried to explain this phenomenon by the launch of the Cosmos-955 satellite from the Plisetsky cosmodrome. But how to explain the fact that a full eight hours before the rocket launch, the bright fireball sat on the tail of a passenger plane flying from Kyiv to Leningrad? This ball was also spotted by Finnish air traffic controllers. And Vasily Sarafanov, a boiler room mechanic at the Petrozavodsk knitting factory, saw a dim yellow ball moving from the direction of Leningrad at about 8 o’clock in the evening on September 19. Before the eyes of Sarafanov and the boiler room operator, the ball began to change color - become yellow, purple, blue, crimson. Gradually the object decreased in size and disappeared.
On the night of September 20, similar phenomena were observed throughout the northwestern part of Europe. In total, about 25 reports of sightings of unidentified objects were recorded. Some of them are of significant interest.
For example, a father and son driving from Leningrad towards Petrozavodsk saw a luminous body in the starry sky, emitting clouds of gray smoke. Then from smoky cloud rays stretched out. The cloud took the shape of an ellipse, the glow inside it acquired a reddish tint. Having estimated the distance to the object, one of the eyewitnesses, a physicist by training, decided that the UFO was located over Petrozavodsk, which was about 100 km away. At the same time, through the side window, observers noticed a whitish spherical object with a diameter of 15–20 m. It smoothly fell to the ground 30–40 m from the road. The cloud descended along the trunks of fir trees, which disappeared from visibility for a while, and then appeared again. A minute later it disappeared behind the trees. All this time, the UFO over Petrozavodsk was emitting rays onto the ground. After approximately 40 minutes from the start of observation, the Petrozavodsk cloud dissipated, split into three and disappeared from sight. Eyewitnesses were seized with inexplicable panic, the driver started the car, and they drove off at high speed.
The next morning, melted holes with a diameter of 57 mm were discovered in the windows of several Petrozavodsk houses. Reflow samples were sent for research to the Glass Institute in Moscow. The examination showed that the glass had formed crystal structures correct shape! IN laboratory conditions scientists were unable to achieve such an effect.
Unidentified objects in the Petrozavodsk region were observed more than once after September 20, in particular, on September 30, October 20 and 28, November 4 and 9. And on May 17, 1978, at about 5 o’clock in the evening, the Pushkins, returning from fishing near Petrozavodsk, saw a bright glowing ball, which they initially mistook for a spotlight. It hovered above the trees and then slowly flew away towards the mountain.
It is curious that when observing objects, almost all eyewitnesses experienced psychological discomfort to one degree or another, and sometimes a feeling of oppression and fear, although they knew nothing about the nature of the phenomenon. On the eve of the incident in Petrozavodsk on September 20, many residents of the city experienced some kind of gloomy premonition.
September 1977 was one of the key points in the development of Soviet and then post-Soviet ufology. It was after the “Petrozavodsk miracle” that researchers, as they say, began to move in earnest. Newspaper publications, speeches by scientists, hypotheses, and so on poured in. True, not immediately, but after three or four days, which looked very strange. But about all sorts of oddities and their reasons - later
So, when reconstructing the sequence of events, we will rely on publications in the newspaper “Socialist Industry”, in the issue of September 23, 1977, testimony of witnesses and interviews of astronomers of the USSR Academy of Sciences to TASS correspondents.
Night of September 20. Astronomers at the Pulkovo Observatory observe a bright ball flying over Karelia and the Leningrad region.
Four o'clock in the morning. approaches Petrozavodsk and hovers over the city right in the clouds, literally pushing them aside and forming a gap in a continuous veil, in which it is located.
Multiple thin beams (obviously laser beams or something like that) were directed from the object towards the ground (in the sense, towards the city). Eyewitnesses describe the phenomenon as a rain of light - the rays looked like thin streams of water pouring from the shower.
According to other accounts, the phenomenon resembled a jellyfish, with the creature's characteristic thin and long tentacles extending from the bottom of the object.
The phenomenon lasted about twelve minutes, after which the UFO retreated, leaving numerous witnesses to ponder such a strange event.
What happens if you point it out the window? The glass, being transparent, will not be damaged. It doesn't heat up sun rays, you can touch and see for yourself.
In short, during a laser attack there is a possibility that some objects in the apartment will catch fire, but nothing will be done to the window glass.
However, some witnesses claimed that these rays melted holes in their windows.
This is where, as they say, the first clue for the researcher is hidden. When they came up with this detail, they forgot that glass cannot melt under the influence of a laser beam. Of course, if it wasn't tinted. But in 1977, it probably wasn’t like that in apartment windows.
Maybe the beams weren't laser beams, you say. Somehow unknown to earthly science. Well, this possibility cannot be ruled out. But in this case it turns out to be some kind of absurdity: only one glass melted - and nothing else.
The melting point of glass is usually from 800 degrees Celsius. This is enough for the multiple rays to set the entire city ablaze in the glow of predawn fires!
Yes, you have the right idea: there cannot be many witnesses at four in the morning for one simple reason: most workers are asleep at this time. At this pre-dawn hour, even the most avid night owls' eyes are drooping.
Police patrols, fire department officers, and guards at military installations do not sleep. But for some reason they are not interviewed. They interview representatives of other professions - and one gets the impression that the UFO arrived in the middle of the working day.
We exclude the version that the city was woken up at four o'clock in the morning by sirens, as during a bombing, and on the radio they ordered everyone to lift their heads and stare at the sky in unison. Means...
So, really, nothing happened, you say with disappointment, and the whole story is nothing more than a newspaper “duck”. But I really wanted to believe in a real miracle at least once in my life...
Calmly! Miracles happen! But only real ones, and not fictitious ones specifically in order to distract the wider masses from real UFOs.
All the elements of a hoax are present: and incredibly large number eyewitnesses, and the absurdity of the phenomenon itself (why would aliens shower the city with laser beams?), and newspaper hype at a time when the authorities categorically suppressed all “pseudo-scientific speculation” about flying saucers, and real facts were tightly kept secret.
The fact that the “Petrozavodsk miracle” was falsified is also evidenced by the contradictory chronology - sure sign untruths.
In the Leninskaya Pravda newspaper, in the issue dated September 23, 1977 (yes, the article was published on the same day! Apparently, according to instructions from above, sent to all local newspapers), the time of the phenomenon is no longer four in the morning, but twenty minutes to eight. And this time, few people noticed him, oddly enough.
Moreover, noted the meteorologist, whose duties included observing the sky. And the rest of the citizens at the beginning of the working day, presumably, were so preoccupied with building a bright future that they would not have seen a UFO even under their noses, let alone above the city.
In addition, the object, you see, was no longer a jellyfish, but a dumbbell. And there were actually many such contradictions in newspaper publications on September 23-24, 1977.
Why was the information “duck” needed? What was it urgently necessary to divert people's attention from? From several UFO crashes that occurred in the same 1977.
The most reliable case is the explosion of a plate in May in Vologda region, over Lake Kemskoye. It crashed so loudly that alien vehicle There wasn’t even any debris left, no matter how hard the divers searched. It just splashed molten drops of golden metal - that’s all. But that, as they say, is a completely different story...
“No one was ready to study the known phenomenon,
which took place over Petrozavodsk in September 1977.
Even now we have to admit
that he was only observed, but not studied.”
Academician V. Krat
An interesting note was published in the Moscow newspaper “Socialist Industry” dated September 23, 1977 - “An Unidentified Natural Phenomenon”:
“Residents of Petrozavodsk witnessed unusual phenomenon nature. On September 20, at about four o’clock in the morning, a huge “star” suddenly flashed brightly in the dark sky, impulsively sending sheaves of light to the earth. This “star” slowly moved towards Petrozavodsk and, spreading out over it in the form of a jellyfish, hung, showering the city with many thin ray jets that gave the impression of torrential rain.
Through short time the ray glow ended. “Medusa” turned into a bright semicircle and resumed its movement towards Lake Onega, the horizon of which was shrouded in gray clouds. In this shroud, a semicircular gulley then formed, bright red in the middle and white on the sides. This phenomenon, according to eyewitnesses, lasted 10-12 minutes.
Director of the Petrozavodsk Hydrometeorological Observatory Yu. Gromov told a TASS correspondent that “the workers of the Karelia meteorological service have not previously observed any analogues in nature. What caused this phenomenon, what its nature is, remains a mystery, because there are no sharp deviations in the atmosphere not only for last day, but on the approach to them it was not registered by weather observation posts.” “We also know,” Yu. Gromov emphasized, “that there are no technical experiments in our area given time was not carried out. However, it is also impossible to classify everything as a mirage, because this unusual phenomenon has many eyewitnesses, whose testimonies are largely identical, although observing a rare phenomenon that did not leave its mark physical evidence, they happened to come from different places in the city.”
That's how it is full content notes in the newspaper “Socialist Industry”.
The same note was published in the Petrozavodsk newspaper Leninskaya Pravda on September 24, 1977. Please note that the article in the local newspaper was published not only four days after the event itself, but even later than in the central newspapers.
In the same issue of the Petrozavodsk newspaper “Leninskaya Pravda” another note on this matter was published, but not reprinted, but its own:
“It started at about four o'clock in the morning and ended at about ten minutes past five on September 20 this year. At eight forty minutes in the morning of the same day, our correspondent talked with eyewitnesses: the driver of the car “ ambulance» V.A. Belyaev and doctor V.I. Menkova, who were finishing their duty.
It was like this,” said V. Belyaev. “About four o’clock in the morning, a team of doctors and I arrived on a call to Anokhin Street, house 37-6. At approximately four o'clock five minutes a glow appeared above the roof of the opposite house. Then I saw a strange halo and a luminous “star” from which jets emanated, filling most of sky. When the fireball "approached" the "handle" Ursa Major, the glow disappeared, and he began to descend vertically down. This lasted for ten to fifteen minutes.
Over Lake Onega, the “star” seemed to freeze and began to descend, and the cloud near it began to increase in circumference. The “star” shone very brightly. Suddenly, something separated from the “star,” like a ray of light, and at the end of this ray a saucer or an oval ring appeared, which began to descend and then disappeared.”
And one more emotional detail that did not make it into the newspapers. When the ambulance found itself in the beam of light emitted by the “star,” everyone was “overtaken by a feeling of fear and doom.” The driver stopped the car and moved it away only after the “star” moved away and the glow went out.
The “space alien” was observed by many Petrozavodsk residents: a woman who was in a pay phone booth; another, hurrying to the pharmacy; a team of port workers...
The name of the woman who was in the pay phone booth is Tamara Tikhonova. Here's what she said:
“...When leaving the telephone booth on the corner of the street. Antikainen and Lenin Avenue, I saw something flash... I jumped out into the middle of Lenin Avenue and saw, somewhere around the Severnaya Hotel, a strange large object that made no noise when moving. I only saw him from behind. It was round, light, either blue or gray. This object was moving towards Lake Onega. Of course, I was very scared, I went home, but I couldn’t sleep for a long time.”
This interview did not make it into the newspapers.
The next eyewitness of what was happening, A. Pavlenko, said (but this was also not published in the newspapers) that he “saw how some strange object spherical, which descended in a spiral and then hovered over the Severnaya Hotel. This ball made a hum and flickered. It hung for 5-7 minutes, then the roar intensified, and the ball flew away towards Lake Onega.”
In the same note above there are the words: “the study continues, observations obtained in different cities are compared.” That is, this event was observed not only by residents of Petrozavodsk.
From the same materials I will cite only one more testimony. The observation was carried out from an area located several tens of kilometers from the city of Sortavala. The eyewitness was an employee of the Institute of Lake Science of the USSR Academy of Sciences A.P. Novozhilov.
“...I missed the train to Lakhdenpokhya and decided to take the bus to Priozersk. I was on the highway in the village of Kurkieki, waiting for a bus. I stood facing the highway and my back to the lake, looking northwest. At first it was raining, then it cleared up and the stars became visible.” Novozhilov saw a falling star, which he mistook for a meteorite. However, the “meteorite” did not fall, but stopped, and then began to move towards the observer, quickly increasing in size and taking on the appearance of a body that resembled an airship and was clearly defined. The body had a six or octagonal shape, was elongated and limited in front and behind by brightly luminous spots... and the edges resembled windows lit from the inside. The body moved at an altitude of 300-500 meters and had a diameter of 12-15 meters. The approach of the body caused a feeling of anxiety and panic in the observer, he said: “It was creepy, I crouched down to the ground.” The body length was about 100 meters.
As the body approached the observer, a brightly glowing light flew out from the stern white ball and went north, perpendicular to the direction of movement of the “airship”, which was moving from west to east. The ball first moved horizontally, and then descended behind the forest and reached the ground. The landing of the ball caused a bright glow to appear, against which the forest was clearly visible..."
At this time, two more people approached and also observed the phenomenon. All three climbed the hill and looked at the glow and the place of the “fall” of the separated body...
It only remains to add that when this body “falled” there was no explosion, otherwise observers would have heard it. Therefore, we must think that this body did not fall, but sat down!
And one more thing small message, taken from an article by Professor M. Dmitriev, published in the journal “Aviation and Cosmonautics” No. 8 for 1978:
“...Engineers working that night in computer centers located in the observation area noted major problems in the operation of the computers, the normal functioning of which was then completely restored.”
Please note that these problems did not occur in one computer center, but in several, most likely, in all computer centers in the region. In all works about UFOs, without exception, this is precisely the phenomenon noted - interruptions in engines, shutdown of electrical and radio systems, etc.
This could be the end of the description of this case, if not for one nuance. Many Petrozavodsk residents who were absent from the city during this event returned home to find that the glass of their windows was pierced by some kind of melted through holes with a diameter of 50 and 70 millimeters. By constructing a reverse parallax using these penetrating holes, we obtained more or less exact height object hovering - 14 kilometers.
These are the mysterious events that occurred over Petrozavodsk. This mystery still remains unsolved and it has not yet been possible to explain it with “earthly” laws.
