A GIGANTIC JET OVER CHINA: You never know what you might see in the wake of a big storm. On Aug. 25th, Chinese astrophotographer Chao Shen of Shaoxing City went outside to photograph the Milky Way. A typhoon named "White Deer" had passed through the day before, and the storm clouds were parting. "I saw the stars--but that's not all," says Shen. "A Gigantic Jet leaped up right before my eyes!"
Think of them as sprites on steroids: Gigantic Jets are lightning-like discharges that spring from the tops of thunderstorms, reaching all the way to the edge of space. They're enormous and powerful.
"Shen definitely caught a Gigantic Jet," confirms Oscar van der Velde of the Lightning Research Group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. "It looks like it may have reached as high as 90 km above the ground."
"Gigantic Jets are much more rare than sprites," says van der Velde. "While sprites were discovered in 1989 and have since been photographed by the thousands, it was not until 2001-2002 that Gigantic Jets were first recorded from Puerto Rico and Taiwan." Only dozens of Gigantic Jets have ever been photographed.
Shen says that "the Jet came from a storm about 100 km southwest of me. It was so huge, I was able to see it clearly despite the distance."
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Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights
- Maria
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Re: Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2019
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.
- Maria
- Archon
- Posts: 8428
- Joined: Fri 11 June 2004 8:39 pm
- Faith: True Orthodox Christian
- Jurisdiction: GOC
- Location: USA
Sprite Halo over the Caribbeans
A SPRITE HALO OVER THE CARIBBEAN: Two nights ago, Frankie Lucena of Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, trained a video camera over a distant passing storm hoping to photograph upward-directed lightning. It's something he often does. Lucena is a successful sprite hunter. In this case, however, he caught something different--a sprite halo.
"I was hoping for some sprites, but instead I was treated with this cool looking halo lightning event," says Lucena. "It was generated by a powerful cloud-to-ground lightning discharge just south of the Dominican Republic on the night of Sept 6, 2019."
This satellite weather map shows where his camera was pointing:
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2019Sprite halos are giant saucers of light approximately 50 kilometers wide and 10 kilometers thick. They often appear milliseconds before sprites themselves, with sprite streamers hanging down from the saucer's fading afterglow. In this case, however, the halo appeared all by itself.
"There were no sprites," says Lucena. The ionization of the atmosphere may have been too weak to cross the threshold required for streamer formation. That's okay. Sprite halos are cool enough on their own.
September 7, 2019
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.
Re: Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights
Both the Gigantic Jet and the Sprite Halo are so pretty !