This is the kind of very lucky shot that astronomers are looking for every day.
Look at these red sprites captured as a lucky break in the thunderstorm clouds formed over Croatia, yesterday!
High above Earth in the realm of meteors and noctilucent clouds, a strange and beautiful form of lightning dances at the edge of space. Researchers call the bolts “sprites”; they are red, fleeting, and tend to come in bunches.
These two groups of red sprites were shot by by Martin Popek over Croatia at 539 and 556 km distance from his observation site (Nydek in Czech Republic) on November 6, 2014.
Sprites are a true space weather phenomenon as they develop in mid-air around 80 km altitude, growing in both directions, first down, then up. This happens when a fierce lightning bolt draws lots of charge from a cloud near Earth’s surface. Electric fields [shoot] to the top of Earth’s atmosphere–and the result is a sprite. The entire process takes about 20 milliseconds.
The lucky astronomer uploaded a video of his sightings on an astronomy portal of Czech Republic. Just to tell you. Srites are so fast you will hardly see anything. I hope you enjoyed!
