Scientists at the International Space Station observed a bright blue lightning bolt shooting upwards from thunderclouds.
Blue jets it can be difficult to detect from the ground as the electric discharge erupts from the upper thunderclouds. But from space, scientists can watch this cerulean light show from above. On February 26, 2019, instruments aboard the space station caught a blue jet firing from a thunderstorm near Nauru, a small island in central shooting. Pacific ocean. The scientists described the event in a new report, published in the journal on January 20. Earth.
The scientists first saw five intense flashes of blue light, each lasting about 10 to 20 milliseconds. The blue ray then blows from the cloud in a narrow cone shape that protrudes into the water stratosphere, the atmospheric layer that extends approximately 10 to 50 kilometers above the earth’s surface.
Related: Photos of elves and blue jets: see the strangest lightning on earth
Blue rays appear to appear when the positively charged upper region of a cloud interacts with the negatively charged boundary between the cloud and the sky above, according to the report. The blue ray appears as a result of this ‘electrical breakdown’, where the opposite charges in the cloud alternate and momentarily equalize, releasing static electricity. However, the properties of blue jets and the height to which they protrude above clouds are not well characterized, the authors noted. This study therefore contributes to our understanding of the dramatic phenomenon.
Four of the flashes in front of the blue ray came from a small pulse ultraviolet light (UFS), the scientists noted. They identified these emissions as so-called ‘elves’, another phenomenon seen in the upper atmosphere.
“Elves” – an acronym that stands for emissions of light and very low frequency interference due to electromagnetic pulse sources – are light emissions that look like fast-growing rings in the ionosphere, a layer of charged particles extending from about 60 to 1000 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 as light, the authors write.
The team observed the flashes, elves and blue rays using the European Space Agency’s Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), a collection of optical cameras, photometers, X-ray detectors and gamma ray detectors connected to a module on the space station.
“This paper is an impressive highlight of the many new phenomena observed by ASIM during thunderstorms,” said Astrid Orr, physical science coordinator for human and robotic spaceflight at the European Space Agency (ESA). said in a statement. Experts also suspect that phenomena in the upper atmosphere, such as blue jets, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, as the ozone layer sits within the stratosphere where it occurs, according to the ESA statement.
Originally published on Live Science.