This hasn’t been posted in a while, and given all the jellyfish activity going on right now, seems it might be time to dust it off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrozavodsk_phenomenon
From the wikipedia entry.
Most sightings occurred between 1:00 and 1:20 am UTC, when at least 48 unidentified objects reportedly appeared in the atmosphere. The glowing objects were also observed in various places in the Soviet Union, mostly in the northwest. The appearance of an unidentified object over Helsinki reportedly caused heavy radio traffic in Soviet territory.[8] In the European part of the Soviet Union “bright, luminous bodies surrounded by extended shells and emitting light rays or jets of quaint shapes” were reported.[11] The “shells” reportedly “transformed and diffused within 10 to 15 minutes”, while “a more long-lived, stable glow was observed, mostly in the northeastern part of the sky”.[11]
In the settlement of Kurkijoki a luminous object was seen by engineer A. Novozhilov, who compared it to an airship. He reported the sighting to the candidate of technical sciences, Konstantin Polevitsky, who recorded it. Initially Novozhilov saw what he thought to be a meteor.[8] After some time the object had stopped and then moved towards Novozhilov, quickly increasing in size and acquiring the well-outlined shape of an airship.[8]
Another detailed account of one unidentified object was given by Soviet writer and philosopher Yuri Linnik&action=edit&redlink=1). He observed the object at his dacha near Namoyevo at about 3:00 am through an amateur telescope with an 80× magnification. The lens-like object, surrounded by a dim, translucent ring, had a color of a “dark amethyst, intensively lightened from inside”.[8] The edges of the lens-like object had 16 spots (described by Linnik as “nozzles”[13]) which emitted pulsating red rays at an angle of 10°–15°.[8] The angular size of the object was estimated at 20 arcminutes.[8]
**Explanations:**
Several proposals to explain the nature of the phenomenon have been argued. The director of the Pulkovo Observatory Vladimir Krat initially thought that the phenomenon was caused by the fall of a meteorite.[13] Later in public speeches, he attributed the phenomenon to aurorae).[13]
In the interview, published in 1977 by Kansan Uutiset and Uusi Suomi, the employee of Nurmijärvi geophysical observatory Matti Kivinen assumed that an unidentified object over Finland could be the remnant of a launch vehicle or satellite. James Oberg attributed the Petrozavodsk object to the launch of the Soviet satellite Kosmos-955 from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, which took place on 20 September at about 3:58 local time.[15]…Referring to his 18-year service experience at Kapustin Yar site, Ukrainian researcher Oleh Pruss said: “I know firsthand, what a spectacle in the sky occurs during the rocket launches – it’s quite an impressive view. However, there was something completely different over Petrozavodsk”.[26]
In 1978, Aviatsiya i Kosmonavtika published an article “‘Flashes’ in the Atmosphere” by M. Dmitriyev, where a chemiluminescence hypothesis was put forward. According to Dmitriyev, the phenomenon was “neither the result of technical experiments nor a mirage“, but a chemiluminescent area in the atmosphere.[18] Concerning that hypothesis, Ziegel wrote that “the energy output of chemiluminescence is negligible”, unlike that of the Petrozavodsk object, and that the conjectured chemiluminescent clouds cannot soar against the wind, which the Petrozavodsk object appeared to do.[20]
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