Posted on 08/20/2015 6:27:15 PM PDT by ETL
SPRITES AND TROLLS AT THE EDGE OF SPACE: We all know what comes out of the bottom of thunderclouds: lightning. But rarely do we see what comes out of the top. On August 10th, astronauts onboard the International Space Station were perfectly positioned to observe red sprites dancing atop a cluster of storms in Mexico. They snapped this incredible photo:
This shows just how high sprites can go. The photo shows their red forms reaching all the way from the thunderstorm below to a layer of green airglow some 100 km above Earth's surface. This means sprites touch the edge of space, alongside auroras, meteors and noctilucent clouds. They are a true space weather phenomenon.
A few minutes after the astronauts saw the sprites, they spotted a related creature--a "Troll." It jumped up to the left of the sprites:
"Trolls are also known as 'secondary transient luminous events," explains Oscar van der Velde, a member of the Lightning Research Group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. "They are occasionally observed alongside big clusters of sprites, and they can reach 40-60 km high."
Van der Velde says that sprites can actually pull Earth's ionosphere down toward the thunderstorm. When the gap shrinks, and the local electric field intensifies, Trolls appear.
You don't have to be onboard a spaceship to see these exotic forms of lightning. "Sprite chasers" regularly photograph the upward bolts from their own homes. Van der Velde has photographed Trolls from ground-level, too. "I recorded these trolls last October over a storm over the Mediterranean Sea west of Sardinia and Corsica," he says. Browse the sprite gallery for more examples.
First Lightning Sprite Caught On Film
A sprite - upper atmospheric lightning - has been caught on film in extreme slow motion for the first time. Filmed at 10,000 frames per second by Japan's NHK television, movies like this of electromagnetic bursts called 'sprites' will help scientists better understand how weather high in the atmosphere relates to weather on the ground.
video here: (1:16 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uo4nZtxMow
ping-a-ling
Very cool!
Thanks. Nice to know someone, other than myself, thinks so. :)
These have been rumored to exist for decades, but never photographed. Scientists did not believe that they existed. Now amateurs with off-the-shelf equipment can snap them quire often.
Also, scientists denied that amateurs seeing “flashes on the moon” where meteors may have struck were crazy. Then, they were photographed by several people.
That’s incredible. Neat pictures.
Related phenomenon: stepped leaders, upward leaders, streamers, dart leaders, and return strokes
“Recent advances in video equipment allow videographers to capture high speed images of lightning. These cameras are capable of capturing many stages of the lightning flash that the human eye cannot discern.
When played back in slow motion, stepped leaders, upward leaders, streamers, dart leaders, and return strokes can be seen.”
http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/science/science_slow_motion_flashes.htm
Thanks ETL, extra to APoD. Besides other reasons, when I see these upper atmosphere electrical phenomena, it makes me laugh at the expense of the space elevator advocates.
Wow. Very! Cool!!
The grant-grabber crowd of only believes in Gore-bull Warming and vivisection of human babies.
They look like space jellyfish!
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