Blue jet lightning. This is the first image ever captured of blue jet lightning. (Date of Image: Unknown), Credit: Victor Pasko, Penn State University. Blue jets occur much less frequently than sprites. They are not related to lightning.[27]. [citation needed], On August 13, 2016, photographer Phebe Pan caught a clear wide-angle photo of a gigantic jet on a wide-angle lens while shooting Perseid meteors atop Shi Keng Kong peak in Guangdong province [21] and Li Hualong captured the same jet from a more distant location in Jiahe, Hunan, China. They are similar to jets. [14] That ELVES was discovered in the Shuttle Video by the Mesoscale Lightning Experiment (MLE) team at Marshall Space Flight Center, AL led by the Principal Investigator, Otha H."Skeet" Vaughan, Jr. ELVES is a whimsical acronym for Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency Perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources. These atmospheric discharges occur very high in the Earth 's atmosphere - much higher than the familiar form of lightning. They can also be preceded by a reddish halo, known as a sprite halo. A smaller variation of blue jets are Use your mouse to right-click (Mac users may need to Ctrl-click) the link above and choose the option that will save the file or target to your computer. C-sprites (short for “columniform sprites”) is the name given to vertical columns of red light. The preferred usage is transient luminous event (TLE), because the various types of electrical-discharge phenomena in the upper atmosphere lack several characteristics of the more familiar tropospheric lightning. Blue starters are considered to be a weaker form of blue jets. On September 14, 2001, scientists at the Arecibo Observatory photographed a gigantic jet—double the height of those previously observed—reaching around 70 km (45 mi) into the atmosphere. They are less than 100 meters across. Upper-atmospheric lightning or ionospheric lightning are terms sometimes used by researchers to refer to a family of short-lived electrical-breakdown phenomena that occur well above the altitudes of normal lightning and storm clouds. Examples may be seen in the clip 'Blue Jets & Blue Starters – the video', Phillips, T. (October 25, 2019). „blaue Strahlen“), die Zehntelsekunden dauern und im Bereich der Stratosphäre aus der Wolkenoberdecke regelrecht herausspringen. [27] They are about 200 meters wide, and have a maximum of 1 kilometer in height. TROLLs, (Transient Red Optical Luminous Lineaments) occur after strong sprites, and appear as red spots with faint tails, and on higher-speed cameras, appear as a rapid series of events, starting as a red glow that forms after a sprite tendril, that later produces a red streak downward from itself. Scientists do not yet know if this is a new phenomenon. Their apparent speeds are in the range of 10 s to 100 s km/s. [12], Blue starters were discovered on video from a night time research flight around thunderstorms[13] and appear to be "an upward moving luminous phenomenon closely related to blue jets. The acronym ELVES (“Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources”) refers to a singular event which is commonly thought of as being plural. Huge Mystery Flashes Seen In Outer Atmosphere, http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20020914103454/http://elf.gi.alaska.edu/, The Endless, Short film inspired by Sprite, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Upper-atmospheric_lightning&oldid=1001571655, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 20 January 2021, at 08:06. Gnomes are small, brief spikes of light that point upward from a thunderstorm cloud's anvil top, caused as strong updrafts push moist air above the anvil. [8] They normally are colored reddish-orange or greenish-blue, with hanging tendrils below and arcing branches above. [25] They occur in the ionosphere 100 km (62 mi) above the ground over thunderstorms. [30] No scientific journals exist on these phenomena yet due to their recent discovery, but they have been observed on footage. [17] The jet was located above a thunderstorm over an ocean, and lasted under a second. More about this Image Their color is unknown as they have only been observed in black-and-white footage. Beim Blue jet lightning Vergleich konnte unser Sieger in allen Kriterien das Feld für sich entscheiden. P1.39 The Discovery of Red Sprites as an Opportunity For Informal Science Education. They are not connected to lightning strikes. It was taken at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported facility. [22], On March 28, 2017, Photographer Jeff Miles captured four gigantic jets over Australia.[23]. More about this Image A team of researchers at Arecibo captured video evidence from the ground of this lightning phenomenon known as blue jet. According to Sunanda Basu, a program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences (which funded the research), the video is the first ground-based evidence of a direct electrical discharge from a thundercloud top to the lower edge of the Earth's ionosphere. In a similar process to how blue jets form, the higher charge region is discharged by the leader network before the same occurs in the lower charge region, and one end of the leader network propagates upward from the cloud toward the ionosphere. This is the first image ever captured of blue jet lightning. The two main types of jets are blue jets and gigantic jets. [4][5] In ensuing decades, high altitude electrical discharges were reported by aircraft pilots and discounted by meteorologists until the first direct visual evidence was documented in 1989. [11] They are also brighter than sprites and, as implied by their name, are blue in color. They were first recorded on October 21, 1989, on a monochrome video of a thunderstorm on the horizon taken from the Space Shuttle as it passed over Australia. Unlike sprites, blue jets are, as the name implies, blue in color. [18][19] The jets lasted under a second, with shapes likened by the researchers to giant trees and carrots. In the 1920s, the Scottish physicist C.T.R. The first video recording of a TLE was captured accidentally on July 6, 1989 when researcher R.C Franz left a camera running overnight to view the night sky. The color is believed to be due to a set of blue and near-ultraviolet emission lines from neutral and ionized molecular nitrogen. A team of researchers at Arecibo captured video evidence from the ground of this lightning phenomenon known as blue jet. They were later dubbed 'pixies'. Blue jets develop on the tops of cloud formations at altitudes of 12 to about 26 miles high. In contrast, other types of TLEs are not electrically connected with tropospheric lightning—despite being triggered by it. The global rate of TLE occurrence has been estimated from satellite (FORMOSAT-2) observations to be several million events per year. Blue jet lightning - Wählen Sie dem Sieger der Tester. 57 DOI: 10.1007/s11434-012-5486-3", https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2019/10/25/close-encounter-with-a-gigantic-jet/, ELVES, a primer: Ionospheric Heating By the Electromagnetic Pulses from Lightning, "Red sprites and blue jets explained - New discovery! [29] They were first observed in 2019 by professional storm chaser Pecos Hank. Gigantic jets between a thundercloud and the ionosphere. Upper-atmospheric lightning is believed to be electrically induced forms of luminous plasma. 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