All You Need To Know About Lightning
Sprites and Elves
This is a section of great interest to me. I have never personally seen either of the phenomena but would love to some day. Sprites are a flash of light, usually red in color, that occur above a thunderstorm. These lights last a brief second. If you blink you will miss it. They extend into the ionosphere. They can be more than 100 miles wide. Theses strange lights can be seen with the naked eye as a blob or like a curtain. Sprites were first captured on film by accident with a low-light camera by three scientists from the University of Minnesota while testing for an upcoming rocket flight. The next ones were also by accident from the space shuttles low-light video camera. Walter Lyons was the first person to get video of sprites on purpose. This was done on July 7, 1993. He captured more than 240 sprites over a thunderstorm happening in the U.S. Less than 48 hours after that two scientists from the University of Alaska got even more pictures from a high-flying NASA aircraft. There names are Davis Sentman and Eugene Wescott. Below is one of the pictures they took. (This will take a little bit to load but is a great sight.)
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Now on to elves. What are elves and how do they differ from sprites? That is a good question. Elves is short for emissions of light and Very Low Frequency. They are also a result from lightning in a thunderstorm. They also can not be seen with the naked eye. Elves look like donuts expanding in the atmosphere. They can reach over 200 miles wide. These too occur above the stratosphere into the ionosphere. They last less than one-thousandth of a second so keep your eyes wide open. Below is a video of one of these that I got from the NASA web site. (This will take a little bit to load but is awesome to see.)
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