Sprites, pixies, or elves? Danish astronaut spies a new weather phenomenon

These transient features are so named because they last about 20 milliseconds.

Read the whole story

 

[kaleberg]

Pilots had been reporting these electrical flashes above t-storms for a while in the late 1980s. I remember an article in Flying magazine with researchers asking pilots to report sightings and, if possible, to provide photographs or video. Apparently, a lot of pilots did respond, and we know a lot more about these sprites, as they called them.

It reminds me of the giant squid which was something seamen had been reporting for years, but until fairly recently there were few specimens or even photos. Then scientists got more systematic and more folks at sea were on the lookout, so now giant squid are less of a mystery.

Both high altitude sprites and giant squid are still amazing, even now that we know more about them.

 

[rrapier]

I want to know more about how these amazing photos were obtained. Did the astronaut simply hold the camera in his hands, stand at a window and zoom in on the likeliest storm? Or did he have some sort of tripod / mount, with the camera connected to a computer, then manually locate and zoom in and let the computer take 1000's of shots? Considering the ISS moves pretty fast, was the mount & zoom motorised and remote controlled from earth but still just shooting through a window? (So here the astronaut's role would be to set it up when conditions were good, and take it down to make more space at other times?)

Afaik he pointed the camera at storm centers and recorded in high ISO exposures. Flashes are bright and distinct. There is no reason for a specific motorized option to figure out orbital telemetry and point a camera. Most likely he spent 10 or 15 minutes in the cupola while the station was above a storm.

 

[berrardo]

Newly published Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r50Un4LPTM4

I think, based on viewing the YT video, that the image shown in the article is actually a photo of the storm over India. The reds and blues in the video look quite different.

 

[Oak]

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1XKRKihnxs4/hqdefault.jpg

I guess that makes me old.

??? Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9 are the same amount of old.
But the Vorlons are way cooler than the Prophets.
https://memegenerator.net/Ambassador-Kosh

For a moment I thought it was a reference to The Black Hole (1979)

Man, I remember loving Babylon 5. Haven't seen it in years, though.

Reminds me -- I knew a science fiction bookstore owner who used the web address bab5.com, years ago. It'd be unheard of now, but back when store homepages were still a novelty, some people were still pretty informal about domain names and used domains that didn't actually correspond to the store name. That was already a step up from an address like http://www.interport.net/~sfmm. I think he may have initially actually had an idea of making a Babylon 5 fansite there, but I don't remember for sure. (He unfortunately passed away a few years ago, so I can't ask him now.)