A sprite with a height of 10.7 km: photos from the cockpit

Pilot Brian Whittaker has spent thousands of hours performing flights to London from USA — during this time he has seen many wonders of the night sky through the glass of the cab. But just recently he finally photographed my first sprite.

As told by Whittaker, June 16, he was flying from Las Vegas to London when the plane flew several very active storm clouds. He watched a lot of quick flashes of lightning — when suddenly from one cloud appeared a sprite.

The green band in the image of the Whittaker — it's not the Aurora, but rather the glow of the air. The air luminescence caused by a variety of chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere of the Earth. These reactions start in the daytime when the atmosphere is literally "bathed" in the strong UV radiation from the Sun. Glow air is just above the height of the appearance of most sprites. Whittaker noted that the sprites do appear at high altitudes, and suggested that I could miss a lot of "space lightning" over the years simply because his camera was set too low.

Summer is the season of sprites and a good time for photographers to direct his optics on the area over the tops of the storm clouds.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»