‘Blue jets’ discovered by the International Space Station

Using special equipment installed at the International Space Station (ISS), the team of scientists achieved the rare feat of a “blue jet” which is created in a specific type of storm clouds and heads towards space. The sighting is described in a published article Natural, Last Wednesday (20).

As the authors of the study explain, blue jets are “lightning strikes similar to several hundred milliseconds that propagate in cones as they propagate from the tops of storm clouds to the stratosphere.” .

Scientists have found at least five blue rays shooting from cloud tops, each lasting between 10 and 20 milliseconds, and reaching altitudes of up to 50 km in the stratosphere. The animation below, created by the European Space Agency (ESA), shows how this phenomenon occurs. See:

These blue jets were spotted in February 2019 during a storm on Nuru Island in the Pacific Ocean. They are formed by an “electrical failure” at the junction of two clouds of different charges, while blue is the effect of stratospheric nitrogen.

Invisible from the face of the earth

Due to the distance and the storm clouds covering them, the blue jets cannot be seen from the Earth’s surface. In this particular case, it was recorded with the equipment of the European Space Atmospheric Reaction Surveillance (ASIM) of the space station.

According to astronomers, the study of this type of phenomenon, also called light emission and very low frequency disturbances by sources of electromagnetic pulses (Elves), allows us to understand how it is propagated. Radio waves, interfering with communications, refers to how lightning affects the greenhouse effect concentration in the atmosphere.