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Scientists at the International Space Station spotted a bright blue lightning bolt shooting upward from thunderstorm clouds.
Blue jets can be difficult to spot from the ground, as electric shocks erupt from above storm clouds. But from space, scientists can observe this cerulean light show from above. On February 26, 2019, instruments aboard the space station captured a blue jet firing from a thunderstorm cell near Nauru, a small central island Pacific Ocean. Scientists described the event in a new report, published Jan.20 in the journal Nature.
Scientists first saw five intense flashes of blue light, each lasting about 10 to 20 milliseconds. The blue jet then flew away from the cloud in a narrow cone shape that extended into the stratosphere, the atmospheric layer that extends approximately 6 to 31 miles (10 to 50 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.
Related: Photos of elves and blue jets: experience the strangest lightning on Earth
Blue jets appear to appear when the positively charged upper region of a cloud interacts with the negatively charged boundary between the cloud and the air above, according to the report. The blue jet appears as a result of this “blackout,” where opposing charges swap places in the cloud and briefly equalize, releasing static electricity. However, the properties of blue jets and the altitude at which they extend above clouds “are not well characterized,” the authors noted, so this study adds to our understanding of the dramatic phenomenon.
Four of the lightning bolts preceding the blue jet came with a small pulse of ultraviolet light (UV), the scientists noted. They identified these broadcasts as so-called “elves”, another phenomenon observed in the upper atmosphere.
“Elves” – an acronym that stands for Light Emissions and Very Low Frequency Disturbances from Electromagnetic Pulse Sources – are light emissions that appear as rapidly expanding rings in the body. ionosphere, a layer of charged particles that extends from about 35 miles to 620 miles (60 to 1,000 km) above the surface of the planet. Elves occur when radio waves push electrons through the ionosphere, causing them to accelerate and collide with other charged particles, releasing energy in the form of light, the authors wrote.
The team observed flashes, elves, and the blue jet using the European Space Agency’s Atmosphere-Space Interaction Monitor (ASIM), a collection of optical cameras, photometers, x-ray gamma ray detectors and detectors attached to a space station module.
“This article is a very impressive moment of the many new phenomena that ASIM is observing above thunderstorms”, Astrid Orr, physical sciences coordinator for human and robotic spaceflight at the European Space Agency (ESA), said in a press release. Experts also suspect that phenomena in the upper atmosphere, such as blue jets, may affect concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, because the ozone layer is found in the stratosphere where it is found, according to the ESA statement.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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