May 20 early morning , Chinese photographers recorded red elf lightning in the Himalayas of Tibet. It is reported that the red spirit lightning is formed in the middle layer of the atmosphere, with ring shape, jet DC shape and jellyfish shape. It is the result of electromagnetic wave generated by lightning. It exists in the air for only a fraction of a second, which is elusive.
For such a scene, netizens also lamented one after another. It's really beautiful, just like the ultimate romantic fireworks show in the universe. Netizen Paulownia Dong Shuchang He also said on his microblog that in the early morning of 520 in 2022, he recorded countless fairy lightning fireworks blooming over the Himalayas.
Red sprite is a kind of Sprite lightning. The academic name of Sprite lightning is "transient luminous event". This kind of phenomenon is a very rare atmospheric luminous phenomenon that began to be concerned by people in the 1990s. Sprite lightning phenomenon is different from ordinary lightning that people usually recognize, but it has a certain relationship with ordinary lightning
"Most types of fairy lightning are caused by strong lightning. If the lightning is particularly strong, fairy lightning may appear tens of kilometers above the place where the lightning occurs." Usually, the duration of ELF lightning before and after one occurrence will not exceed 1 millisecond, and even the duration of some elf lightning types is less than 0.1 millisecond, that is, one tenth of a second.
There are some similarities between ELF lightning and aurora. They are both excited and radiated by particles in the atmosphere. And aurora are caused by solar wind. Solar storms impact the earth's magnetosphere, causing atmospheric particles to move at high speed, ionize, transition and emit light. The difference is that the fairy lightning is a phenomenon that a series of electromagnetic effects are transmitted to the high altitude due to the strong lightning in the thunderstorm cloud below, and then lightning is caused in the high altitude.
Reports of elves date back to 1886, but it was not until July 6, 1989 that scientists at the University of Minnesota took the first pictures of elves. So far, people have taken tens of thousands of ELF photos or films. Why didn't people pay attention to the red spirit until a hundred years later? This is because the red spirit is caused by the positive ground flash between the thunderstorm cloud below and the ground. It appears for about a few milliseconds and needs a high-speed camera to capture it.
The upper part of the red spirit is orange red. The tendrils hanging from it look like huge red jellyfish, and this phenomenon usually occurs in groups, spanning an altitude of 50 to 90 kilometers. In addition to the red spirit, photography enthusiasts also reported jet phenomena in Tibet, which are also related to strong storms
