Sprites-jellyfish in the sky over Oklahoma

Thursday, may 24, in the skies over Oklahoma appeared a flock of glowing jellyfish. "Or rather, sprites-jellyfish," says Paul Smith, who photographed them during a severe thunderstorm near Oklahoma city.

"Sprites sparkled about 130 km from me. From this distance I could see where over the tops of the thunderstorm cells jellyfish. I shot a lot of sprites that were in the 300 and 500 km, but these were unusually close, so these are my best shots," said Smith.

Sprites is an exotic form of upward lightning. Although they have not seen for a century, many scientists did not believe in their existence until 1989, when they hit the lenses of the cameras on Board the space Shuttle.

"I'm shooting sprites since last summer when I accidentally caught them during a meteor shower, the Perseids. I already have a few hundred pictures, and I go out almost every night, when in the vicinity of a thunderstorm. This month, I spent five hours waiting for a clear visibility," Smith said.

Oklahoma is the epicenter of the region, called "Sprite Alley", a corridor stretching across the Great plains of the United States, where severe thunderstorms produce a lot of upward lightning. This year over the area from Texas to Nebraska have already been seen sprites and their cousins the giant jets.

Some researchers believe that the sprites can be associated with space radiation. In their view, subatomic particles from deep space get into the upper part of the earth's atmosphere, producing secondary electrons, which cause the ascending lightning. If so, then the sprites can be observed more often in the coming months and years, because cosmic radiation increases because of the decline of the solar cycle.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»