Fascinating Red Sprites: The Fast and Elusive Upper-Atmospheric Phenomenon

2023-09-22 15:09:57
The red sprites’ strike time extends for about a millisecond or a little more (1 thousandth of a second), which is faster than lightning, which appears for approximately 1/50 of a second. From time to time, NASA’s daily astronomical image platform draws the attention of its followers with a wonderful image of a rare phenomenon. Recently, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the phenomenon of red goblins due to a photo I published on the 18th of this month. A truly strange phenomenon, the first to talk about its existence was the Russian physicist Charles Thomas Wilson in 1925, when he pointed out that electrical breakdown could occur in the upper atmosphere just as it occurs in the lower atmosphere, before it was documented for the first time on July 6. July 1989, when scientists from the University of Minnesota, using a low-light video camera, captured the first image of what later became known as “red sprites” or “lightning sprites.” We now know that it is a weather phenomenon associated with some severe thunderstorms, and it is similar to lightning in its mechanism of occurrence. It is caused by the accumulation of electrical charges in the clouds, but in this case the excess charge is released upward, to an altitude of up to 90 kilometers, instead of shooting down towards the Earth’s surface like lightning. Red sprites are not the only luminous and eye-catching phenomenon in the upper atmosphere (Stivat Vetter). The exciting red color extends the time of the red sprite strike for about a millisecond or a little more (1 thousandth of a second), and thus it is faster than lightning, which appears for 1/50th. About a second. Because they also occur in the upper layers of the atmosphere, they are difficult to monitor and photograph, and only scientists, weather and climate specialists, natural life photographers, and those interested in these types of phenomena in general know about them. Although it appears small in the pictures spread on the Internet, this is due to its height away from us, and in reality the width of the phenomenon is usually 25 to 50 kilometers in the sky. Red sprites are usually red in color, and this color results from the excitation of nitrogen molecules in the upper layers of the atmosphere, so the brightest lines in the spectrum are located in the wavelength ranges of 650-680 nanometers and 750-780 nanometers, which express the red color in the visible light spectrum. Red sprites are not the only luminous and attention-grabbing phenomenon in the upper atmosphere. Rather, there are many phenomena collectively called upper-atmospheric lightning or transient luminous events, such as the phenomenon of blue jets, which also occur with thunderstorms.
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