Sprite (lightning)

As Sprite ( to German " Kobold" or " runt " ) is referred to in meteorology a flash that reaches an altitude of over 100 kilometers deflects upward in a storm above a cloud from the cloud cover out. Most sprites resemble a narrow tongue of flame, sometimes they look like a mushroom cloud. The phenomenon has been discovered at the beginning of aviation, but often dismissed as spinning of pilots. The result was that pilots from fear of being ridiculed, many such observations concealed.

Manifestations

Since sprites are difficult to observe from the ground, there were long only a few photographs of it until 1989 targeted recordings - primarily from airplanes and space shuttles - have been made.

Red Sprites

Red sprites ( in German " Red Goblins " ) appear as reddish or bright red discharges that pass tightly upward and their lightning channels decay usually shortly after emerging from the clouds into countless ramifications, which is why they are also referred to jokingly as " carrot sprites ". Red Sprites occur at altitudes up to 75 km and reach lengths of up to 20 km. This is zerteilende head end of the discharge extends up to 50 km. In some cases, however, discharge the branches themselves one more time, this time downward, with a bluish tint occurs. Due to their appearance, such as sprites are "angel sprites " ( in German "Angel goblins " ) referred. First footage of Red Sprites are from 1989, from 1991 they were recorded specifically during various space shuttle missions. The observations by reconnaissance flights and radar stations on the ground showed that Red Sprites always appear just above the cloud cover of particularly violent tropical storms in the mesosphere ( 55-85 km altitude). They may occur singly or in flocks. An observation with the naked eye turns out to only be useful if the sky in the background of the spectacle is extremely dark as Red Sprites, as opposed to so-called Blue Jets, significantly fainter than conventional cloud - to-ground discharges.

On the origin of Red Sprites, there are different theories. The most common stipulates that builds a strong tension on the clouds particularly violent thunderstorm, due to speedy supersaturation of electrons due to collisions with gamma - rays from the overlying ionosphere discharges by itself.

Blue Jets

In around 40 km altitude arise in a similar way white- bluish, stitch flame-like discharges, so-called Blue Jets ( in German " blue rays " ), take the tenth of a second and jump out literally in the stratosphere from cloud top ceiling. They rise up to 25 km into the air before they dissolve. They seem to be independent of cloud - to-ground discharges.

Elves

Another event are called Elves ( in German " Druden " or " elves " ), appearing at an altitude of 60-105 km (range mesosphere and thermosphere ) and often occur together with red goblins. They are made of ring-shaped and spread coverage in a radius of up to 500 km in fractions of a second. First sightings of Elves were documented in 1992.