#Red sprites

[beccawise7]

Red Sprites over the stormy night skies of Texas. Absolutely beautiful. 💜🖤

(Powerful storm systems often create flickers of light above known as red sprites. The red sprites often go on to create more lightning strikes throughout the storm.)

📷: paulsmithphotography

[without-ado]

Red Sprites over Oklahoma l Domenico

[vangoghcore]

by paulmsmithphitography

[a-dream-seeking-light]

Grand Cosmic Fireworks by Angel An

...

The photo, titled Cosmic Fireworks, won the Skyscapes category of the 2023 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, hosted by the Royal Observatory Greenwich. This breathtaking image not only showcases the awe-inspiring beauty of sprite discharges but also sparks public interest in extreme weather phenomena and their scientific significance. Credit: Angel An

[nasawifey]

[briery]

Lightning sprites, or red sprites, often occurring in tandem with lightning. They are short-lived electrical discharges that flash high above thunderstorms in the mesosphere layer of the atmosphere. (Photo by Stephen Hummel, McDonald Observatory, Texas, United States)

[idyllisk]

Red sprite lightning, photos by Nicolas Escurat and Thanasis Papathanasiou

[wayti-blog]

(Image Credit & Copyright: Li Xuanhua)

"Pictured here are gigantic jets shooting up from a thunderstorm last week toward the Himalayan Mountains in China and Bhutan. The composite image captured four long jets that occurred only minutes apart. Gigantic jets, documented only in this century, are a type of lightning discharge that occurs between some thunderstorms and the Earth's ionosphere high above them. They are an unusual type of lightning that is much different from regular cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning. The bottoms of gigantic jets appear similar to a cloud-to-above strike called blue jets, while the tops appear similar to upper-atmosphere red sprites. Although the mechanism and trigger that cause gigantic jets remains a topic of research, it is clear that the jets reduce charge imbalance between different parts of Earth's atmosphere. A good way to look for gigantic jets is to watch a powerful but distant thunderstorm from a clear location."

source

[vizrecon]

[distantobserver0]

NASA artistic renderings of sprite lightning in Jupiter's upper atmosphere. 2020, JPL / Caltech. Sometimes I feel like if we could have an extra-dimensional understanding of our universe, we would know for certain beauty is inherent to its nature.

[octahedral-chaos]

I could google it, but it's way more fun to listen to you ramble about it, SO:

Transient Luminous Events. wanna tell me about them? And these EVLE things you mentioned?

OKAY SO

Transient Luminous Events, or TLEs, are a bunch of atmospheric phenomenon caused by lightning! They aren't true lightning, they're way too cold and is more like florescent lights.

So the way they formed is when an extremely strong positively charged lightning strikes, causing an imbalance of positive and negative ions in the atmosphere. Because the clouds have a different charge from the upper atmosphere, the particles move between the two layers, creating a TLE! So it's kind of like lightning but less extreme basically.

They occur in the upper atmosphere, from 20 to 100 kilometers above the ground I believe? They occur way above thunderstorms though. Plus they last anywhere from less than a millisecond to 2 seconds, so they are HARD to spot! Plus they tend to be quite faint... In fact, they were only discovered in 1989, although there were reports of them by pilots-

Anyways, onto different types. First off, red sprites!

The most commonly recorded TLE. The bigger ones tend to have blue at the bottom because of Nitrogen in the lower atmosphere exciting in the blue to ultraviolet wavelengths. Plus they may appear in clusters of "Dancing sprites!" Very cool tbh.

Oh and they may appear with a green afterglow on top, which are called Green Ghosts!

Next up, jets!

Basically a regular lightning strike triggering a secondary event. Very cool, there are three types: Blue starters, Blue Jets and Gigantic Jets.

And finally... ELVES

Short for "Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources" (What a mouthful!), ELVEs are my absolute favourite TLE. They could get up to 400 km wide, they occur over 100 km in the air and lasts for less than a MILLISECOND. They are so cool!!!!

There's others like halos, pixies, Trolls and Gnomes. So uhhhhh yeah! Cool false-lightning thingies

[without-ado]

Meteors and Red Sprites l Paul M Smith

[wildwithlight]

[kestarren]

Sprites over storm, Levadia, Central Greece. Photo by Panagiotis Tsouras.

[tornadoquest]

Tornado Quest Top Science Links For March 15 - 22, 2025 #science #weather #climate #climatechange #drought #tornado #astronomy

Greetings to all and thanks for stopping by. The tornado and severe weather season is well underway with 2025 having already seen several substantial severe weather and tornado events. The bulk of the activity is yet to come. Your tornado safety information will be a focal point this week. As usual, there are several thought provoking science reads along with our weekly US Drought Monitor, so…

[melanovia]