Strange photos capture glowing sprites illuminating the Oklahoma sky

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Have you ever seen a giant red jellyfish illuminate the night sky for a split second? If you have, you do not imagine things.

You have just witnessed a lightning – like electric shock in the atmosphere, called sprite.

Paul Smith captured the elusive phenomenon Wednesday night as storms raged over northwestern Oklahoma and Panhandle. Smith positioned himself about 160 km southeast of the storms in the town of Anadarko, a small community located west of Oklahoma City and populated by just under 7,000 inhabitants.

Normally, it's too far to take pictures of thunderbolts – unless you're looking for flashes of heat to light distant thunderheads. But Smith did not have his camera trained on storms – he was looking overhead at them.

It's where sprites live. They are not born in the clouds. They distribute loads well above them at about 30 to 50 miles (48 to 80 km) in the sky.

Commercial airliners fly at an altitude of six to seven miles above sea level. Sprites dance in the mesosphere, higher than shooting stars and meteors.

And although it's hard to tell from photos, the sprites are very big. An ordinary lightning is about an inch thick and several miles (about 5 kilometers) long.

Jellyfish sprites can be 48 km wide. Imagine an electric shock covering the distance from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Other sprites can be a little smaller, such as column sprites and carrot sprites.

The photos that Smith has taken seem to be of the jellyfish variety. Later in the evening, he also grabbed sprites of columns.

"I've captured a number of sprites in 2018," Smith said in an email. "But this last outing was one of my favorites.It was very difficult with an almost full moon in my back."

Although the sprites are poorly understood, the atmospheric electrodynamics have understood the basics of their formation.

Sprites are often triggered by a powerful lightning strike near the ground. They are thought to be a balancing mechanism that the atmosphere uses to dispense charges vertically. It is a fast process that takes less than a tenth of a second. That's what makes sprite hunting so difficult. Blink your eyes and you will miss them.

Sprites were only known until 1989. For decades, pilots reported witnessing huge ephemeral lightning bolts over the peaks of storms, which made it difficult for them to see the light. resembled a pink fire strobe light.

But only a physicist from the auroral sector of the University of Minnesota took a picture of it: scientists have been able to confirm their existence. The physicist, John R. Winckler, had tested a dimly lit television camera that would be used to document the upcoming launch of a rocket. He photographed the sprite by accident.

Nowadays, images of sprites are regularly captured around the world. With the right conditions, you can even try it from home!

Sprites are not terribly rare, they are simply elusive. You need an unobstructed view of a distant and sparkling storm. It must be dark enough so that your camera is not overexposed by taking long exposures. There can not be a lot of light pollution, because it would erase the attempt to snap a sprite. And of course, you need strong storms. So, the best chances of catching a sprite are on the Great Plains in the spring.

Sprites feed on strong electrical disturbances near the surface. Thus, more lightning at the ground level are frequent and intense, better are the chances of seeing a sprite. This is why large sprawling clusters or thunderstorms are more favorable instigators of sprite activity than isolated storm cells.

June is the most frequent month for this type of storm, while large medium-scale convective systems cross the central plains and high plains. These complexes can extinguish over 100,000 lightning each night, dropping dozens of sprites if you know where to look.

So, the next time you enjoy a cool drink watching the distant storms go wild, look up. You may be able to see something incredible. Smith did it.

"I had my first sprite in 2017," he said, "and I've been obsessed ever since."

2019 © The Washington Post

This article was originally published by The Washington Post.

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