The Ascending Light is a case from December 25th, 2025.

Rainer emailed the team:

I just found something interesting from yesterday. In 2 consecutive videos there is a small light emerging from the trees beside the street and going up until it lands (?) on a mountain.
I have no idea what this is.
First I thought a drone, but after landing (?) it is not coming back.

This started a discussion in our Discord community, then on Jan 4. 2026, this case was reported by a local radio station: Nea Radio.

• Nea Radio is a regional/local broadcaster that has been on the air since the mid-1980s, originally serving Selbu, Tydal, Røros, and Holtålen.

A few days later, on Jan 13. 2026, this was followed up by an article in TV2.

• TV 2 is Norway’s largest commercial television broadcaster — a major national TV network offering news, entertainment, sports, series, documentaries and more to viewers across the country.

We put the information about this case on the Recent Findings page, with some pro and contra arguments for possible explanations:

The following image shows a snow-scooter:

You can find the images and videos in this Google Folder...

Then, on January 28th, we got an email from Henning Kuersten:

I hope I could contribute to the Hessdalen project with my analysis and would love feedback. Feel free to post it on the Hessdalen page in order to encourage discussion.

The “Ascending Light” event in the Hessdalen valley

Please download the following images. The list numbers below correspond to the image prefixes on Google drive:

ANALYSIS
Hello everyone! The following frames describe my analysis about this event in Hessdalen Valey on Christmas Eve 2025:

1. You see a frame from Camera 2 of the Hessdalen Project in the direction of 190°, compared to a Google Earth simulation. I did this mainly to estimate the distance the object travelled.

2. The Google Earth simulation in bird’s eye. The minimum total distance travelled is 3 km in the time frame 14:39:30 – 14:41:30. This gives the object a minimum average speed of 90 kmh (56 mph), since we are not taking the irregular path into account or counting the 2-3 occasions where the object stopped for a few seconds.

3. Here we zoom into the distance and look at some other lights. Housing windows are typically square, while lamps are round and sparkly. This is consistent over all frames, so it is not a “by chance” sensor error. It suggests that we can also rely on the observed shapes of the object, and that there is are no ice crystals or water droplets in the air, leading to reflections and refractions, i.e. diversion of light.

4. Car headlights in the video are very different. While also round, they are much brighter and their brightness fluctuates as expected through changes in orientation. The headlight of a car behind trees is nicely round and has a uniform white glow. Most homes use warm white bulbs, while modern LED or xenon car headlights are usually cool with more blue wavelengths.

5. Here we look at different frames of the same object. The object has a red glow, is not round and seems to change its shape, luminosity and brightness, while fading with distance. The frames were extracted while the object seemed to be above the tree tops, except for the top left and bottom three to the right, which were too far away to tell.

6. We do a bit of color correction. The typical blue color cast (night light) is neutralized, enhancing the red glow of the object. In the first frame top left, the object is just emerging from the trees.

7. This frame sequence shows the appearance of the object. We can see that it does not just pop up above the trees, but rises from within the forest. There are 3 faint dots forming a reddish triangle to the right of the tree, and we can assume this is light shining through branches. This would suggest that the object is lighting up a clearance in the forest while ascending. The dots disappear as the object clears the trees.

8. Again we neutralize the blue complexion until the large tree almost shows it’s natural color. The bottom right frame again shows the emerging reddish object, most likely behind a tree.

9. In this collage we compare the windows and lamps to the object, again with Blue slightly neutralized.

10. The same collage with Red enhanced. The windows & lamps do not shift much to Red, but the object does. This suggests that the object could be some sort of plasma or chemical reaction, also supported by the irregular shapes and changing luminosity & brightness.

11. This is a histogram editing experiment. It suggests an irregular, fluctuating light emission of the object as opposed to the steady mundane light sources at the top.

12. (Edge enhancement in B/W: shape comparison step1)

13. We do some edge enhancement and blending out of background noise in order to compare shapes. It shows that the object is of different nature than the mundane light sources in the video.

14. We have very high solar activity at the end of December 25 (marked by the yellow dot), which some researchers associate with frequent UAP sightings worldwide. Recent scientific papers (notably in 2024 and 2025) have proposed that many UAP sightings, particularly those described as "glowing orbs" or "foo fighters," may actually be plasmoids - electrically charged clusters of plasma in the thermosphere. I cannot attest to that, because I believe we would see more events like this in Hessdalen if there was a correlation.

15 & 16: The red glow of the object (analysis image #8), leading to the impression of “combustion” or “burning”, can have several alternative explanations:
- If the object is a plasma type phenomenon, then an ionization of the surrounding air can lead to a red glow. This could explain a reddish tail following the object at times.
- If the object has a reflective, metallic surface, then it could mirror the ambient light which at this time of day would have a higher component of Red.
- It could be a digital effect called "Automatic White Balance" (AWB): the camera sees a lot of Green (pine trees) around the object or in the frame and shifts it to the complementary color Red/Magenta, which spills into the white pixels. The object gets “drowned” in the camera's attempt to neutralize the green forest, turning it reddish. This however is contradicted by the car headlight behind trees, which does not show this red complexion.
- Or a lens effect called "Lateral Chromatic Aberration" (LCA): also called "Red ghosting", where the prism of the camera lens scatters Red more than Blue and Green, leading to a misplacement of Red.
- We also see dark donuts around the object. This may be a form of digital sharpening or an error in HDR brightness normalization.

NOTES
The flickering and changes in brightness & color of the object could result from a combination of:
• Atmospheric Scintillation (sparkling due to temperature & air density shifts)
• Low resolution Pixel Jumping (digital sparkle, aliasing, stair-stepped movement)
• Automatic White Balance (AWB) and Lateral Chromatic Aberration (LCA)
• Rotation and shape-changes
• Chemical reaction or ionization of surrounding air

We often see these effects in videos of stars and planets, leading to the wrong conclusion that the object is an active, pulsing UFO. In our case however, other light sources (windows, lamps, car headlights) in the original video do not display the same amount of twinkling and flickering, and our object also changes brightness and color over several seconds at a time. This could be a result of movement and background texture "shining through" the object, but still does not explain how the object can travel at speeds up to 90 kmh, while most commercial drones accomplish much less.

CONCLUSION
A possible mundane explanation (drone) is found at the top of the Hessdalen report titled “Ascending Light”:
https://www.hessdalen.org/current-activities/recent-findings

However, after my analysis I would firmly rule out a drone. The object is a little big for that, and it would have to have a very bright 360° light source or a burning payload. Maybe this diminished or burnt out after a few minutes and the craft returned to its operator. A drone or model airplane would be a potentially expensive undertaking, because the chances of losing it under the existing light conditions are high. There is surely no visual between operator and craft. At times the object passes very close to tree tops and seems to descend back into the forest in the last half minute of its visible flight.

The top speed of commercially available drones lies at around 80 kmh. High speed sport drones can go up to 113 kmh. Our measured object flies at an average of 90 kmh (that is 56 mph). I used straight paths between START, PEAK and END, and ignored stops. So higher speed intervals of the observed object could be more in the region of 100+ kmh.

A deliberate hoax is always hard to rule out. However, there are no cars, scooters, bicycles, flash lights or humans near the event, and the object seems to land quite a distance uphill from the starting point. If someone was performing a hoax, he would have probably chosen a later and darker time of day. And he would have had a very hard time finding and retrieving the object after a 2km uphill climb on foot. The date of the 25.12.2025 could hint at someone celebrating Christmas in a special way or testing a new type of fireworks for New Years Eve.

One may also conclude, especially given the date, that it could be a balloon or chinese lantern, carried up the mountain by the wind. However, the flight path is too irregular, the object stops at one point, descends, and then speeds up too fast. And in none of the frames I could detect a relevant wind. But in any case, the average speed of 90 kmh (56 mph) does not fit this theory at all.

SUMMARY
In my analysis I observe a fluctuating, possibly rotating orb of 0.5-1.5 m diameter with white to reddish light emission. The color and behavior does not in any way compare to buildings, windows, lamps or car headlights in the same video material. The object displays an enormous peak speed of 90 kmh (56 mph) and an irregular flight path. I thus lean towards a natural explanation, meaning this could be “the real thing” which has haunted Hessdalen for so many decades.

If you want to learn more about UFOs, UAPs and plasma phenomena, I encourage you to read the Amazon bestseller "The Dyatlov P ass Mystery - NOT A Cold Case", a scientific book about the famous mountaineering mystery in which 9 students died a mysterious and horrible death on a hiking expedition in the Ural mountains. There are many references to Hessdalen in this book, which is co-authored by well known writer Keith McCloskey and SETI researcher Dr. Massimo Teodorani.

Regards
Henning Kuersten
The Dyatlov Pass Mystery – NOT A Cold Case
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XC3LCFJ
Mobile, WhatsApp, Signal: +49 174 4366464
US Mobile: +1 907 331 6428

PS: I encourage everyone to read my book, an Amazon bestseller attempting to explain a 67 year old mountaineering mystery in which APPs (Aerial Plasma Phenomena) may have led to the death of 9 students at the Dyatlov Pass. There are many references to Hessdalen in the book. I want to thank Keith McCloskey and Dr. Massimo Teodorani, who contributed scientifically to my theory.