When a thunderstorm comes, lightning strikes. Lightning is often seen even in the rain. You must have seen them in white or yellow or sometimes light blue color. But have you ever seen a bolt of red flashing lightning? Recently, scientists saw lightning flashing red in the sky. This lightning was thumping over the atmosphere…
Lightning of red color is called a sprite. This is due to extremely sensitive and intense thunderstorms. Where normal celestial lightning falls from the clouds towards the earth. Sprites flee to space. They go to the upper part of the atmosphere. Their strength and intensity are very high. But these are extremely rare. Red-colored lightning ie sprites are visible only for a few milliseconds. That is why it is very difficult to see and study them. We let you know what scientists have learned and understood.
What are Lightning Sprites?
Because of its behavior, it is named Sprite. These are the energy particles emanating from the stratosphere that are generated by intense thunderstorms. Here, when more flow goes into the ionosphere above the clouds, then such light is seen. That is about 80 kilometers above the ground. Usually, they appear in the shape of jellyfish or carrots. Their average length-width remains up to 48 kilometers. More or less it depends on the intensity.
It was not easy to see them from the earth. You can see them clearly from living on the space station. Sprites aren’t just born from thunderstorms. These are also caused by Transient Luminous Events (TLEs). Those are called Blue Jets. It is a blue light coming down from space, on top of which a saucer-like shape is formed.
Sprites formed in space:
It is not necessary that because of the Earth’s atmosphere, only red lightning can be seen here. It can also be seen in all the planets and stars having atmospheres. The picture of similar sprites in the atmosphere of Jupiter was taken by NASA’s Voyager-1 spacecraft in the year 1979. These were the Blue Jets.
The Sprites were first seen by some civilian aircraft in the 1950s. After this, many theories were given regarding them. The first photo came in the year 1989. This photo was an accidental photo. This photo was an accidental photo. Researchers at the University of Minnesota were examining a low-light camera, when they took a picture of its light above the clouds was taken by mistake. After this, many astronauts from the space station made videos of these lights.
Red lightning: The electrifying weather phenomenon explained https://t.co/RA4YNFdbHT pic.twitter.com/pUwQ15VKfR
— SPACE.com (@SPACEdotcom) July 13, 2022
