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Credit & Copyright: Matthew G McHarg, Jacob L Harley,
Thomas Ashcraft, Hans Nielsen
Explanation:
What causes
sprite lightning?
Mysterious bursts of light in the sky that momentarily
resemble
gigantic jellyfish have been
recorded for over 30 years,
but apart from a general association with positive cloud-to-ground lightning,
their root cause remains unknown.
Some thunderstorms have them -- most don't.
Recently, however,
high speed videos
are better detailing how
sprites actually develop.
The featured video,
captured in mid-2019,
is fast enough -- at about 100,000 frames per second -- to
time-resolve
several sprite "bombs" dropping and developing into the
multi-pronged streamers that
appear on
still images.
Unfortunately, the
visual
clues provided by
videos
like
these
do not fully resolve the sprite origins
mystery.
High speed vidoes do indicate
to some researchers,
though, that sprites are more likely to occur when
plasma irregularities
exist in the
upper atmosphere.
Astrophysicists:
Browse 2,300+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: lightning
Publications with words: lightning
See also:
- APOD: 2023 October 2 Á Sprite Lightning in High Definition
- APOD: 2023 September 18 Á The Red Sprite and the Tree
- APOD: 2023 June 25 Á Lightning on Jupiter
- APOD: 2023 April 17 Á ELVES Lightning over Italy
- Star Trails and Lightning over the Pyrenees
- Red Sprite Lightning over the Czech Republic
- Gigantic Jet Lightning from Puerto Rico