What is sprites?

Elven dance or red ghosts: what are the sprites, we will discuss in our today's post.

From the point of view of physics, sprites are electric discharges of cold plasma, beating in the mesosphere or thermosphere. They were discovered relatively recently — in 1989 — and still are the object of attention of scientists.

The name "sprite" is derived from the English language ("sprite") and means "fairy", "elf". In the Russian literature these phenomena are often called "ghosts" or "red ghosts". Sprites occur a few milliseconds after powerful lightning strike at the height of from 50 to 130 kilometers. At length the sprite can reach up to 60 km and a diameter of up to 100 km They differ from lightning, representing a ripple of the electric field moving up. In the place where the atmosphere becomes thinner, and may form the electrical discharge, — sprite. This phenomenon lasts less than 100 milliseconds.

"Red ghosts" often appear over land. They occur mainly groups and arranged in a circle. In the sky they make "dancing" movement.

Researchers conduct a real "hunting for ghosts", the nature of which still raises many questions. Aboard the ISS, installed the monitor monitoring atmospheric space interactions (ASIM), whose main task is to study the physics of transient luminous events (TLE) and the properties of the thunderstorms that cause them.

Perhaps very soon we will get a more complete answer to the question of what kind of phenomenon is sprites!

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»