What are lightning elves?

What are lightning elves?

ELVES (Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources) often appear as a dim, flattened, expanding glow around 400 km (250 mi) in diameter that lasts for, typically, just one millisecond. They occur in the ionosphere 100 km (62 mi) above the ground over thunderstorms.

What causes elves lightning?

Red sprites, blue jets and elves are upper atmospheric optical phenomena associated with thunderstorms that have only recently been documented by using low light level television technology. These phenomena are collectively called Transient Luminous Events (TLE’s).

What is sprite and Jets?

red sprites and blue jets, flashes of light that occur above thunderstorms and that are associated with normal lightning in the thundercloud below. Related Topics: thunderstorm.

Are sprites real?

If you’re looking for sprites or elves dancing in the forest after dark, you might be disappointed—but in a way, they do exist. What are known as “sprites” and “elves” are actually Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) that emerge from the upper atmosphere when thunderstorms are brewing and lightning strikes.

What is the rarest type of lightning?

ball lightning
ball lightning, also called globe lightning, a rare aerial phenomenon in the form of a luminous sphere that is generally several centimetres in diameter. It usually occurs near the ground during thunderstorms, in close association with cloud-to-ground lightning.

How rare is a red sprite?

Red sprites occur at altitudes of about 50 miles into the atmosphere and account for only 5 percent of all lightning phenomena. In fact, red sprites were only first photographed in 1989, and recordings like this one captured in a video by photographer Scott McPartland are extremely rare.

Why is sprite lightning red?

Sprites or red sprites are large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above thunderstorm clouds, or cumulonimbus, giving rise to a quite varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky. They are usually triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud and the ground.

Why is sprite red?

Red sprites are thought to be caused by a rare but intense form of lightning called positive lightning. Whereas most cloud-to-ground lightning has a negative electric charge, positive lightning has a positive charge.

Does red lightning exist?

Red lightning doesn’t exist in the literal sense, according to the National Weather Service. The closest known phenomena is something called a red sprite, which occurs high in the atmosphere “directly above an active thunderstorm,” NOAA says.

Is red lightning real?

Is green lightning real?

Although green lightning seems unusual, Few now suspects it occurs during all thunderstorms but is concealed inside clouds. The concealment results from the structure of storm clouds. On the inside, the clouds contain ice crystals that are either positively or negatively charged.

What is the rarest color of lightning?

One of the more uncommon lightning colors seen in the world is red. These are known as sprites, and are short bursts of red light above the clouds during a thunderstorm. Red lightning is an occurrence of weather that does not last very long.

What is Elves?

Barrington-Leigh, C. P., ” ELVES : Ionospheric Heating By the Electromagnetic Pulses from Lightning (A primer) “. Space Science Lab, Berkeley. ” Darwin Sprites ’97 “. Space Physics Group, University of Otago. Gibbs, W. Wayt, ” Sprites and ELVES : Lightning’s strange cousins flicker faster than light itself “. San Francisco.

Are elves bright in the sky?

Elves Like sprites, elves are reddish, ultra-fast bursts of electricity bright enough to see during the daytime high in the Earth’s atmosphere. But elves are ring-shaped halos that can spread to more than 185 miles (300 kilometers) wide.

Do elves dance in thunderstorms?

But elves are ring-shaped halos that can spread to more than 185 miles (300 kilometers) wide. Scientists first captured images of elves and sprites dancing above thunderstorms in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The leading culprit behind elves and sprites is positive lightning. Elves, sprites and blue jets of storms.

Why can’t we see elves from space?

The lightning strike itself produced light at a wavelength just too short for human vision, but easily visible to many animals. Although Elves are fairly common, studying something so short-lived that can only be seen from space or high in the atmosphere has been a challenge.