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Huge Heliostatic Mirrors Are Rigging Artificial Sunlight in Norway

It's the realization of an idea over a century old.
Images courtesy of Visit Rjukan

It’s already dark and cold in the wintertime, especially in Scandinavia. But winter in Rjukan, a small town in Norway, is about as bleak as it gets. The 3,500 residents of Rjukan live in a valley surrounded by mountains that completely block out any hope of sunlight for five months during the winter, from September to March.

Now engineers are using sun-tracking mirrors to defy nature and shed some winter sunlight on the town for the first time.

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The town just finished installing three huge mirrors on the mountainside that will reflect sunlight down into the town square. Helicopters installed the 300-square-foot mirrors, completing the project deemed The Mirror Project. Assuming everything goes according to plan, the first artificial sun will be reflected when winter rolls around in a couple month.

The heliostatic mirrors are programmed to reflect the sunlight in a constant direction—toward a 2,000-square-foot area in the town square, which the town expects to be a popular gathering place for the residents of Rjukan this coming winter.

The mirrors are controlled by a computer that will be kept in the town hall office. The solar-powered mirrors monitor the sun’s movement and automatically adjust their position to reflect the light down into the town square.

It’s an impressive feat—making artificial sun. But it's not the first time. A similar sun mirror was installed in a tiny village in the Italian Alps several years ago. The successful experiment inspired a documentary called Lo Speccio (The Mirror).

In Rjukan, the mirrors are the realization of an idea over a century old. Sam Eyde, a famous Norweigan industrialist that built the hydroelectric factory near Rjukan (the reason anyone lives in a town that's dark for five months), wanted to reflect sunlight into the valley, but didn't have the technology to pull it off. Now we can add seasons to the list of things that can be artificially concocted with the right technology.