Elusive phantoms sealed from space

Elusive phantoms sealed from space

A magnificent image made from the international space station on the night of August 10, 2015, demonstrates the orbital view of numerous thunderstorms over the city night lights in southern Mexico. That's not all: if you look closely, in the right edge of the image you can see bright red and purple glow, towering above the flashes of lightning. This so-called "red sprite" English. - A rare phenomenon that occurs in the upper atmosphere.

His first photograph was taken in 1979, but then only brief flashes of optical activity were captured. The phenomenon got its name because it is difficult to catch. As a rule, phantoms appear as red octopus tentacles near a strong flash of lightning. Such electric flashes can extend up to 90 km (or 50 miles) in height with no lighting and 65-75 km (or 45 miles) above the bright area of ​​the Earth.

Elusive phantoms sealed from space

Phantoms are very fleeting. As a rule, it occurs only for 3-10 milliseconds, which makes it very difficult to catch the phenomenon. So the fact that on August 10 we managed to capture it was a great success.

Phantoms were photographed from the ISS (this is a great place to observe such phenomena, which so often hide from the human eye behind a multitude of clouds). We can say that this picture is currently the best of those that have ever had to do.

Elusive phantoms sealed from space

It may be interesting to you, the phenomenon of "Phantom" and the bright green-blue glow, also called the Northern Lights, are completely different things.

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