Incredible space lightning over Texas

In the Northern hemisphere autumn has arrived. But in West Texas thunderstorms active like it's the middle of summer. 6 Oct powerful storm front passed around Texas, literally showering the sky with lightning and the "shooting" sprites.

Paul Smith took these photos, being 266 km from the storm in Minko (OK).Smith noted that the sprites were fantastic. He took a few pictures with them while in the clouds was the spaces before the sky became completely cloud-based.

Sprites — an exotic form of upward lightning, sometimes called "cosmic lightning" because of their "whiskers" can extend to the top of Earth's atmosphere. You must be far away to see these lightning spurting from the tops of storm clouds. Distance Smith 266 km was appropriate.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the storm Thomas Eshkraft photographed the same sprites, being at a similar distance in new Mexico. According to him, in addition to sprites, you can also see faint red ripples of light in the atmosphere behind them. This gravitational wave is literally a wave of thunderstorms in the mesosphere at an altitude of about 80 km above the Earth's surface.

Gravitational waves often appear with photos in the background of the sprites, because both phenomena derive from the same source, powerful thunderstorms. It is, in fact, the waves of pressure and temperature generated by powerful storm systems.

Gravity does not change inside the wave — this name was given because gravity acts as a restoring force that tries to restore the balance between air flows, going up and down.Eshkraft added that despite the onset of autumn in this part of the United States can still be observed high electrical activity.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»