Lmst

Red Sprites above The Kimberley, Western Australia.

Photographer Danny Welgama says red sprites happen in the blink of an eye.

#RedSprites #LuminousPlasma #ElectricalStorms #Photography #Australia

A fleeting burst of red light high above a Kimberley storm in Western Australia's far north has been caught on camera by photographer Danny Welgama, from 150-200 kilometres away.
These red sprites (and sometimes blue jets and gigantic jets) are shooting upwards, 40-90 kilometres above large thunderstorm clouds.

A Bureau of Meteorology spokesperson said while lightning strikes and red sprites were both large-scale electrical discharges, they were quite different.
Red sprites, a form of luminous plasma, occur in higher levels of the atmosphere, the stratosphere and/or mesosphere, compared to typical lightning, which is in the lowest layer, the troposphere.
Source: ABC Kimberley

Red Sprites and Circular Elves Lightning over Italy

What's happening in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including tentacled red sprites and ringed ELVES.

Image Credit & Copyright: Valter Binotto

#photography
#lightning
#RedSprites
#ELVES
#APOD

ELVES are rapidly expanding rings that are thought to be created when an electromagnetic pulse shoots upward from charged clouds and impacts the ionosphere, causing nitrogen molecules to glow. Capturing either form of lightning takes patience and experience -- capturing them both together, since they usually occur separately, is rare. The featured image is a frame from a video recorded from Possagno, Italy late last month above a distant thunderstorm over the Adriatic Sea.

@ZorzStudios

More red sprites:

#photography
#RedSprites

Andromeda and Sprites over Australia

What’s happening over that tree? Two very different things. On the left is the Andromeda galaxy, an object that is older than humanity and will last billions of years into the future. Andromeda (M31) is similar in size and shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy. On the right is a red sprite, a type of lightning that lasts a fraction of a second and occurs above violent thunderstorms.

Image Credit & Copyright: JJ Rao

#astrophotography
#RedSprites
#M31
#APOD

Red sprites were verified as real atmospheric phenomena only about 35 years ago. The tree in the center is a boab, which may live for as long as a thousand years. Boab trees grow naturally in Australia and Africa and are known for being able to store large amounts of water: up to 100,000 liters. The featured image was captured last month near Derby in Western Australia.

From red sprites to Milky Way marvels, these winning shots from #CaptureTheDark2025 are truly otherworldly (15 pics): https://zorz.it/TVHct

#SaumyaRatan #RedSprites #MilkyWay #photography #PhotographyContest #SkyPhotography #WinningShots #showcase #winners

#DPReview has a new article about a jaw-dropppingly great photo by Dan Zafra, in New Zealand, of the milky way, the comet SWAN, and aurora, *and* red sprites. It's insane!

The foreground looks to be the Ōmarama clay cliffs.

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/7526167980/a-photographer-s-journey-to-capture-one-of-nature-s-rarest-and-most-enchanting-displays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTwM30VQjwg&t=2s

#nz #photography #astrophotography #redsprites

@PeterMotte@social.linux.pizza

Yes. But they're very rare, very brief and very high.

Look it up on Wikipedia.

Here's the most dramatic capture I've seen, like a spruce tree on fire:

#photography
#RedSprites