HAARP ( II )

The powerful radio transmitter array at the HAARP observatory near Gakona, Alaska, is designed to transmit a narrow beam of powerful radio signals into the sky. The response to this intervention reveals details of the chemistry and physics of the ionosphere.

One such experiment carried out in March 2004 had an unexpected outcome, inducing artificial optical emissions bright enough to be seen as small speckles by the naked eye. This occurred not in the quiet ionosphere, but in the midst of a pulsating aurora, and represents features much smaller and brighter than ever observed previously.

We still don't know the exact date, so we go to the original paper which tells us:

We recently produced dramatically stronger artificial optical emissions bright enough to be visible to the naked eye in an experiment targeting the ionospheric E layer created by the natural aurora. The experiment was conducted on 10 March 2004, between 6–7 UT, using the 960-kW transmitter array at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facility near Gakona, Alaska (62.4° N, 145.15° W).
The HAARP transmitter was run in a 15-s cycle alternating between 7.5 s of full power and 7.5 s off. Four filtered optical imaging systems ranging from all-sky to telescopic were operated in synchronization with the transmitter on and off intervals. Background conditions during the experiment period were characterized by aurora pulsating with apparent periods of 10 s in longitudinal bands running in the magnetic east–west direction over most of the sky, including the region within the transmitter beam. The auroral precipitation created a blanketing E layer near an altitude of 100 km with critical frequencies ranging from 4–6 MHz. [...]
For a period of approximately 10 min between about 06:40 and 06:50, a number of small speckles of enhanced green emission were observed with the HAARP telescope wide-field camera, which provided high-resolution images of the region within the transmitter beam near magnetic zenith. The speckles were present only during the image frames when the transmitter was on and were absent from exposures taken during the off periods. There is evidence of dynamic pulsations in the background aurora within this narrower field of view as well, such as the auroral bands that appear and disappear in the lower left corner of the images. The largest speckles are approximately one degree across.

 Well, they seem to be concentrating on trying to convince people that they are just experimenting with ways to sell stuff, but I don't buy it. Being the curious sort that I am, I wondered why nobody seemed to have noticed anything about this at the time. I didn't remember reading any news articles on the 11th of March about any strange lights in the sky, assuming that anybody in Alaska would have been looking up. But, just as you, dear reader, may have done, the instant I thought about March 11th, something else occurred to me: indeed, an event occurred on March 11, 2004... in Madrid.