{"id":775003,"date":"2023-12-05T01:34:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-05T06:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=775003"},"modified":"2023-12-05T01:34:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T06:34:00","slug":"red-sprites-are-best-seen-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=775003","title":{"rendered":"Red Sprites are Best Seen from Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Planet Earth is full of some truly awe-inspiring spectacles, but few are as intriguing as a sprite, which are officially known as a Transient Luminous Event (TLE) and consist of large-scale electric discharges that shoot upwards while occurring above the cloud tops in the Earth\u2019s mesosphere at approximate altitudes of 50-90 km (31-56 mi). 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 with the Davis camera as part of the Thor-Davis experiment and his Huginn mission.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-164626\"\/><\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p>\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"What Is a Sprite? Earth&#039;s Super Rare Red Lightning Explained\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NBPjUcMGqbY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>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\u2019s surface and act as a \u201cbalancing mechanism\u201d used by the Earth\u2019s atmosphere to distribute vertical electrical charges.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Images of a red sprite taken by the Davis camera from the International Space Station in October 2023 by Expedition 70 Commander, Dr. Andreas Mogensen. (Credit: ESA\/DTU\/ A. Mogensen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cThese images taken by Andreas are fantastic,\u201d said Dr. Olivier Chanrion, who is a senior researcher at Danish Technical University (DTU) Space and lead scientist for this experiment. \u201cThe Davis camera works well and gives us the high temporal resolution necessary to capture the quick processes in the lightning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Thor-Davis experiment builds off the Thor experiment also conducted by Dr. Mogensen during his first mission to the ISS in 2015. During that experiment, Dr. Mogensen shot a 160-second video displaying 245 blue jets, which are another type of lightning event that shoots up towards space, with results from those findings being published in a 2016 study in <em>Geophysical Research Letters<\/em>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p>\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"ScienceCasts: A Display of Lights Above the Storm\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sQH6Oo4hn94?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The earliest recorded report of sprites\u2014though they weren\u2019t called that right away\u2014occurred in November 1885 from the <em>R.M.S. Moselle<\/em> as it was leaving port in Jamacia with the sprites then being described as a \u201cmeteorological phenomenon\u201d while \u201csometimes tinged with prismatic hues, while intermittently would shoot vertically upwards continuous darts of light displaying prismatic colours in which the contemporary tints, crimson and green, orange and blue, predominated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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 being published in <em>Science<\/em> the following year. It wasn\u2019t until a 1995 study published in <em>Geophysical Research Letters<\/em> that these electrical charges were officially dubbed \u201csprites\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"750\" height=\"534\" src=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/potw2234a-750-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-164631\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/potw2234a-750-1.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/potw2234a-750-1-580x413.jpg 580w, https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/potw2234a-750-1-250x178.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 706px) 89vw, (max-width: 767px) 82vw, 740px\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Image of red sprites taken in 2022 from the European Southern Observatory\u2019s (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile. (Credit: Zdenek Bardon\/ESO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>What new discoveries about sprites will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!<\/p>\n<p><em>As always, keep doing science &amp; keep looking up!<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded\" id=\"like-post-wrapper-24000880-164626-656ec2135defc\" data-src=\"https:\/\/widgets.wp.com\/likes\/#blog_id=24000880&amp;post_id=164626&amp;origin=www.universetoday.com&amp;obj_id=24000880-164626-656ec2135defc\" data-name=\"like-post-frame-24000880-164626-656ec2135defc\" data-title=\"Like or Reblog\">\n<h3 class=\"sd-title\">Like this:<\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"button\"><span>Like<\/span><\/span> <span class=\"loading\">Loading&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"sd-text-color\"\/><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/164626\/red-sprites-are-best-seen-from-space\/?rand=772204\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Planet Earth is full of some truly awe-inspiring spectacles, but few are as intriguing as a sprite, which are officially known as a Transient Luminous Event (TLE) and consist of&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":775004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genaero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=775003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/775004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=775003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=775003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=775003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}