Huge Mystery Flashes Seen In Outer Atmosphere

[Magikman]

Cloud-to-Earth lightning bolts are a well-known natural electrical occurrence. Now scientists have discovered and photographed for the first time enormous, 90-kilometer-high (55-mile), luminous, electric discharges that deliver large quantities of current from thunderstorms to the edges of the Earth's atmosphere.

The flashes, described in a letter published in the current issue of the journal Nature, is believed to be a type of phenomenon known by atmospheric physicists as a "transient luminous event."

View: Full Article | Source: National Geographic

[antares]

Magikman, I thing this article is about the "sprite" phenomenon, somethimes it's called "red sprite", somethimes "blue jet".

[dust19]

It's very rare that we see something that is just plain flat out cool, no doubt about it. This is one of them.

[Starlyte]

Ditto what dust19 says. I had no idea such things exisited. We had major thunderstorms here last night. I wonder how many of these beauties were dancing around in the clouds above my head? Beautiful pictures and great article. Thanks Magikman!

[SpaceyKC]

Amazing discovery, awesome pictures! Nice find MM!

[Bizarro]

http://www.rednova.com/news/stories/2/2003...5/story008.html

title is pretty self-explanatory. interesting stuff.

[Magikman]

Posted this one earlier today.

[djdodo]

WaW

I wish to see one of those ...

But maybe it is very hard to take it on camera ... because it says that

((since most of the phenomena appear and disappear much too quickly for the human eye to capture))