- 4280 - RED SPRITES - rare atmospheric phenomena? Planet Earth is full of some truly awe-inspiring spectacles, but few are as intriguing as “sprites”, which are officially known as a transient luminous event (TLE) and consist of large-scale electric discharges that shoot upward while occurring above the cloud tops in the Earth's mesosphere at approximate altitudes of 31–56 miles.
----------------- 4280 - RED SPRITES - rare atmospheric phenomena?
- Red Sprites sound
like a new candy. But this variety is
unearthly. Red sprites are best seen
from space.
-
- In October 2023,
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, Dr. Andreas Mogensen, who is currently
onboard the International Space Station (ISS) as Commander of the Expedition 70
mission, took an incredible image of a red sprite.
-
- Sprites have been
observed from the ground and aircraft. However, the preferred observation
method is from outer space due to the sprites occurring above the cloud tops
and the low altitude of the ISS offering pristine views of these unique
lightning features.
-
- While they are
observed above cloud tops, they are hypothesized to originate from normal
lightning near the Earth's surface and act as a "balancing mechanism"
used by the Earth's atmosphere to distribute vertical electrical charges.
-
- Since red sprites
are essentially lightning strikes and visible for only a fraction of a second,
specialized event-based cameras such as the Davis camera are required to
precisely capture them. The Davis camera contrasts with a normal camera in that
it does not take direct photographs, but instead creates images by sensing
light and contract variances. Through this, the Davis camera capabilities are
analogous to a normal camera taking 100,000 images per second.
-
- The earliest
recorded report of sprites, though they weren't called that right away,
occurred in November 1885 from the R.M.S. Moselle as it was leaving port in
Jamacia with the sprites then being described as a "meteorological
phenomenon" while "sometimes tinged with prismatic hues, while
intermittently would shoot vertically upwards continuous darts of light
displaying prismatic colors in which the contemporary tints, crimson and green,
orange and blue, predominated."
-
- It took more than
100 years for the first photographic evidence of sprites to happen, when a team
of scientists from the University of Minnesota accidentally imaged electrical
discharges using a low-light-level television camera in 1989, with their
findings later published in Science the following year.
-
- It wasn't until a
1995 study published in Geophysical Research Letters that these electrical
charges were officially dubbed "sprites." In the last several
decades, sprites have been observed from all continents except for Antarctica,
along with being observed from the ground, aircraft, and even outer space.
-
- Prior research has
shown that during some thunderstorms, atmospheric phenomena known as sprites
appear above normal types of lightning. Prior research has also shown that
sprites are electric discharges, typically displayed as red-orange flashes in
various shapes, which means that they are technically another type of
lightning. They are known in the science community as transient luminous events
(TLE).
-
- The consensus is
that the “green ghosts” were likely nothing more than excited oxygen
atoms. Because of their rarity, it took
the researchers nearly four years to achieve a photo, on the night of September
21, 2019, they pointed their device at a TLE over the Mediterranean Sea. And
while the team was not able to capture photographic evidence of the green
ghost, their equipment showed a glow in the green spectrum. It lasted for more than 500 milliseconds,
far longer than a TLE.
-
- They found evidence
of nickel, iron and nitrogen in addition to oxygen suggesting that the green
ghost resulted from meteoric ablation of interplanetary dust particles moving
through the atmosphere at high speed.
-
-
December 19, 2023
RED SPRITES - rare
atmospheric phenomena? 4280
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