What is space lightning called?

Early research reports for these events referred to them by a variety of names, including "upward lightning," "upward discharges," "cloud-to-stratosphere discharges," and "cloud-to-ionosphere discharges." Now they are simply referred to as sprites, a whimsical term that evokes a sense of their fleeting nature, while at ...

What is lightning on the fringes of space called?

These colorful flashes are called blue jets and they can stretch 30 miles into the stratosphere. Blue jets can only be seen from the ground under rare circumstances because they're brief and are typically obscured by clouds.

What is ELVE lightning?

ELVES (Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources) often appear as a dim, flattened, expanding glow around 400 km (250 mi) in diameter that lasts for, typically, just one millisecond. They occur in the ionosphere 100 km (62 mi) above the ground over thunderstorms.

What are storm sprites?

Sprites are rapid flashes of red light that occur high up in the mesosphere, over 50 kilometres above the ground. Similar to how lightning is an electrical discharge between a cloud and the ground, sprites are electrical discharges between the top of a thunderstorm and the upper atmosphere.

What is a jet lightning?

A 'blue bang' sparks an unusual type of lightning in the upper atmosphere. The International Space Station spotted an exotic type of upside-down lightning called a blue jet (illustrated) zipping up from a thundercloud into the stratosphere in 2019.

ScienceCasts: Dark Lightning

What is Spider lightning?

Spider lightning refers to long, horizontally traveling flashes often seen on the underside of stratiform clouds. Spider lightning is often linked to +CG flashes.

What is blue lightning?

A "Bolt from the Blue" is a cloud to ground lightning flash which typically comes out of the back side of the thunderstorm cloud, travels a relatively large distance in clear air away from the storm cloud, and then angles down and strikes the ground.

What is green lightning?

Those are the types of storms that can produce hail and tornadoes. Green lightning does indicate that the cloud is extremely tall, and because thunderclouds are the tallest clouds, green is a warning sign that large hail or a tornado is on the way.

Is Pink lightning real?

In snowstorms, where it is somewhat rare, pink and green are often described as colors of lightning. Haze, dust, moisture, raindrops and any other particles in the atmosphere will affect the color by absorbing or diffracting a portion of the white light of lightning.

What is the rarest type of lightning?

ball lightning, also called globe lightning, a rare aerial phenomenon in the form of a luminous sphere that is generally several centimetres in diameter. It usually occurs near the ground during thunderstorms, in close association with cloud-to-ground lightning.

What is dark lightning?

Dark lightning is a burst of gamma rays produced during thunderstorms by extremely fast moving electrons colliding with air molecules. Researchers refer to such a burst as a terrestrial gamma ray flash.

How hot is sprite lightning?

Sprites come from a cold plasma phenomenon, which means they do not have the hot temperature channels that typical lightning has (remember, at 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, lightning is five times hotter than the sun). Sprite formation is more analogous to fluorescent tube discharges than lightning discharges.

What are the types of lightning?

What is the rarest color of lightning?

Green lightning is a rare phenomenon that can be seen during a thunderstorm. Someone who has seen green lightning is extremely lucky as green lightning strikes are rarely seen. It is so rare that the only photograph of a green lightning strike is one from when the Chaiten volcano in Chile erupted.

What is red lightning called?

Sprites, also known as red lightning, are electrical discharges that appear as bursts of red light above clouds during thunderstorms.

Is red lightning real?

Red lightning doesn't exist in the literal sense, according to the National Weather Service. The closest known phenomena is something called a red sprite, which occurs high in the atmosphere “directly above an active thunderstorm,” NOAA says.

Is there Black lightning?

Scientists have just begun to understand a strange phenomenon known simply as "dark lightning". Different from regular lightning, dark lightning is a release of high-energy gamma radiation—sources include supernovae and supermassive black holes—that is completely invisible to the human eye.

What color lightning is the hottest?

The color spectrum in this case start with infared which is red and the coolest up to ultraviolet which appears violet and is the hottest. Lightning also can take on a range of colors, depending on conditions in the clouds and in the air. Typically, blue lightning within a cloud indicates the presence of hail.

What is orange lightning?

Lightning traveling through open air emits white light, but can appear in different colors depending on local atmospheric conditions. Distant lightning can appear red or orange the same way the setting sun does, due to moisture, haze, dust, etc in the lower levels of the atmosphere.

Is rainbow lightning real?

Rainbow lightning is a rare as the chances of lightning striking near a rainbow are slim, explained Randall Cerveny, a professor of meteorology at Arizona State University in Tempe. 'Usually, you don't get those two things to line up at the same time,' he said in a 2015 Live Science piece.

What does purple thunder mean?

Purple or lilac-tinted lightning bolt is often caused by high atmospheric humidity; which means the thunderstorm is accompanied by high-precipitation.

How hot is purple lightning?

How Hot Is Purple Lightning? Purple lightning is often seen during thunderstorms and it's one of the more moderate forms of lightning with temperatures reaching up to 55,000 degrees Fahrenheit!

How hot is white lightning?

This flow of electrons through the lightning bolt creates a very hot plasma, as hot as 50,000 degrees, that emits a spectrum of electromagnetic energy. Some of this radiation is in the form of radio waves and gamma rays.

Why is lightning a zig zag?

Lightning basically tries to find the path of least resistance as it travels down to the ground. But this is not always a straight line because air is not a perfect mixture. There are fluctuations in temperature, humidity, pollutants, dust particles, etc. in the air, and so the resistance varies.

Can lightning create gamma rays?

It has been discovered in the past 15 years that among the processes of lightning is some mechanism capable of generating gamma rays, which escape the atmosphere and are observed by orbiting spacecraft.