this coming winter, the Norwegian town of Rjukan will have one bright spot: a town square illuminated by sunlight bounced off giant mirrors placed atop the town's neighboring mountains.Call it a mood enhancer. Or a tourist attraction. But the mirrors, which will be carried in via helicopter, will provide an oasis of light in an otherwise bleak location at the center of the 3500-population town.Three mirrors with a total surface area of about 538 square feet will sit at an angle to redirect winter sun down into the town, lighting up over 2150 square feet of concentrated space in the town square. A similar idea exists in the Italian village of Viganella, which has used brushed steel to reflect light since 2006.A computer located in Rjukan's main town hall office will operate the solar-powered system, which continually monitors the movement of the sun and calculates the optimal positioning of the German-made mirrors to keep the squarewhich the city plans to turn into a skating rinkbathed in sunlight. The project will set the Norwegians back 5 million kroner (about $835,000), but 80 percent of the funds will come privately and the system will run primariy on solar and wind power. Sam Eyde , co-founder of the Norwegian industrial behemoth that bears his name, originally wanted to place mirrors on the mountains nearly a century ago. But he lacked the technology, so built a cable car in 1928 instead. That route has proven to be a popular escape from the dark city ever since. But now, Norwegian officials say, "the square will become a sunny meeting place in a town otherwise in a shadow."After initial clearing of trees and pouring of a concrete foundation, helicopters delivered the mirrored panels in mid-July. The first real test of the system comes in September when the angle of the sun begins to put Rjukan in the shadows, which lasts until March. Those five-plus months may seem more bearable now thanks to one at least in the town square.Follow Tim Newcomb on Twitter at @tdnewcomb ||||| The extreme far north (or south) isn't the only place on Earth that spends the winter locked in perpetual darkness. Beginning in September and ending in March, the Norwegian town of Rjukan is cast into a perpetual shadow. But no longer: This month, engineers are completing The Mirror Project, a system that will shed winter light on Rjukan for the first time ever. 
 
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 A few days ago, helicopters descended on the 3,500-person town to install three huge rectangular mirrors on the face of the mountains that pin Rjukan in on either side. Technically, these are heliostatic mirrors, which are controlled by a central computer that tilts their positioning to reflect the sun onto a specific, static location. (It's more common to find them on solar farms, for example.) 
 
 The "hot spot," in this case, is a 2,000-square-foot circle on the town square—soon to be converted into an ice rink (apparently, the reflected light still won't be terribly warm). When Rjukan begins to fall into shadow roughly a month from now, the mirrors will begin their first tests. "The project will result in a permanent installation which, with the help of the 300 square foot mirrors, will redirect the sun down into the valley," explained town reps. "The square will become a sunny meeting place in a town otherwise in shadow." The entire operation, amazingly, is set to cost less than a million dollars. 
 
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 As lovely as it is, the Mirror Project forces us to wonder: Why was Rjukan built in the first place? In fact, it was settled around the turn of the century, when a famed Norse industrialist named Sam Eyde built a hydroelectric factory in the valley. It turns out that Eyde had the mirror idea first—but had no way to implement it. According to TIME, his alternative was to build a cable car that workers could use to escape the valley floor for a few hours on weekends. 
 
 It may be the most extreme example, but Rjukan's mirror won't be the first artificial sun in Europe. In 2006, a small Italian town in the Alps called Viganella installed a 26-foot-wide mirror atop a neighboring mountaintop. Viganella, like Rjukan, sits at the bottom of a valley, and for 82 days of the year it receives no direct sunlight. Their mirror—which is still in use today—even became the subject of a documentary called Lo Specchio ("The Mirror"). Meanwhile, the Austrian town of Rattenberg also installed its own heliostatic system around the same time. 
 
 Builders and engineers have been using mirrors in similar ways for decades, of course. Shipbuilders would use wood-embedded prisms to reflect light belowdecks on early trading ships, for example. And even today, architects use mirrors to light hard-to-reach interior courtyards. It's the scale that's really remarkable here—along with the fact that for the first time since the mountains around Rjukan took shape, this small patch of valley will experience an entirely unknown type of light. [Popular Mechanics] 
 
 Images courtesy of Karl Martin Jakobsen via Visit Rjukan.
– The 3,500 residents of Rjukan, Norway, live in shadow for five months every winter, thanks to surrounding mountains that block the sun—but this year, they'll have at least one cheery spot when the shadows start to descend in September. The town square will be lighted via huge mirrors, which were delivered by helicopters to the mountains earlier this month, Popular Mechanics reports. Sunlight will bounce off the 538 square feet of surface area provided by the three mirrors to light a 2,000-square-foot circle in the town square, which the city is turning into an ice skating rink. (Gizmodo points out that the light apparently won't bring much heat with it.) The $835,000 "Mirror Project" is pretty high-tech: It will use mostly wind and solar power, and will be run by a computer in the town hall that will monitor the movement of the sun in order to figure out how the mirrors need to be positioned at any given time. Gizmodo explains that these heliostatic mirrors are more commonly found on solar farms. Neat side note: Sam Eyde, the industrialist who basically founded the city when he put his hydroelectric factory there, wanted to install mirrors almost 100 years ago but couldn't carry out the plan due to limited technology; he built a cable car up the mountains instead. (Click to read another story that hinges on the absence of sunlight.)