Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency compilation, dated 23 September 1977, reproduces TASS wire reports from 22 September 1977. The central item reports that residents of Petrozavodsk, Karelia, saw a huge star at about 0400 on 20 September. It spread over the city like a medusa, showered it with fine rays, and then moved toward Lake Onega, with the whole sighting lasting 10 to 12 minutes. Observatory director Yu. Gromov called the cause a riddle and said it was not a mirage. The pages also carry the Prognoz-6 launch and an IL-62 record flight.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
The director of the Petrozavodsk hydrometeorological observatory, Yu, Gromov, told a SSSS correspondent that the staff of the Kirchlian meteorological service have not previously observed analogies of this kind in nature. What caused this phenomenon and its nature remains a riddle, because the weather observation posts did not record any severe deviations in the atmosphere, either in the previous 24 hours or in the time period prior to it. We also know, stressed Yu. Gromov, that no technical experiments were being carried out at the time. However, although it left behind no material evidence, it is also impossible to describe this rare phenomenon as a mirage, as there were many eyewitnesses who observed it from various parts of the city and whose evidence is identical on many points. Soviet WOMEN SET WORLD FLIGHT RECORD IN IL-62 LD221522Y Moscow TASS in English 1459 GMT 22 Sep 77 LD [Text] Moscow, September 22, TASS--Two world records were set today by the flagship of Aeroflot, the IL-62 jet passenger plane. According to preliminary data, both ground-based instruments and instruments on board the plane recorded that the IL-62, piloted by a crew of six women, had set a world distance record along a closed route 10,388 kilometres. The second world record-average speed along a closed route of 10,000 kilometres, now amounts to 804 kilometres per hour. The plane landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport at 15 hours 22 minutes today. ( )
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 2 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.