Happy Thought for 9 December 2022

Have a Happy Thought: 

 

You know lightning is, in general, amazing to see.

But sometimes it can still really surprise you.

 

This is known as a “jellyfish sprite” – two guesses why.

a glowing red patch in a late evening sky, with dark clouds on the horizon below the glow. There is an upper, diffuse bell-shaped glow, with about a dozen points of brighter glow. from each of those points there are what look like dozens to hundreds of streamers coming downward.

 Image: Stephen Hummel

 

This phenomenon happens when there’s enough electrical discharge way up above where storms are.

Storms tend to happen in the troposphere, or maybe up into the stratosphere. Sprites are dozens of kilometres above that, in the mesosphere.

 

For those of you that don’t have kids at exactly the right age to have the layers of the atmosphere memorised…

Layers of Earth's Atmosphere. image showing layers of the atmosphere, up to 100km above earth's surface. The troposphere reaches to about 20km; this is where most storms are, depicted by different types of clouds in the image. Sprites are shown between 60 and 80km altitude.

 UCAR/Randy Russell. From https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/atmosphere/layers-earths-atmosphere

 

And aurora happen even further up – here’s an even-more zoomed-out view:

Diagram of the layers within Earth’s atmosphere, up to 400km above earth's surface. satellites orbit at around 300km; aurora happen between 100 and 200 km elevation.

Credit: NASA. From https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2919/earths-atmosphere-a-multi-layered-cake/ 


Thanks to the McDonald Observatory of The University of Texas at Austin for bringing this to our attention:

https://twitter.com/mcdonaldobs/status/1293570650498637826?s=03

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you, we love reading your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Thought for 30 June 2023

Image
Have a Happy Thought:     At the end of this week, possibly as you are reading this email, you get to have some separation between work colleagues and home life. (If you’re retired… well, I’m already jealous, so don’t @ me with a “ what is a week-end ” sort of quote).   But four very lucky people (yes, I’m somehow jealous of them as well), this week began a 378-day “week”, being shut in with their colleagues.   June 25 2023 was the start of the CHAPEA Mission 1 - a simulated Mars habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Centre. For just over one year, these four people will live as if they were on Mars, giving us valuable insights into logistics and human psychology. You can watch the emotional press-conference / shutting-the-door-behind-them , it’s actually very cute! Mission patch for Chapea-1 https://www.nasa.gov/chapea/mission1  with the mission motto Ad Martus A Domo and the participants' names Selariu, Haston, Jones and Brockwell.   Of cour...
Read more

Happy Thought for 31 March 2023

Image
Have a Happy Thought:   The world can look very different, depending on your perspective. This is not only true when people go into space , it can be as simple as…   Focusing on the water, instead of the land: AltText: An alternative projection of the Earth, centred on Antarctica, showing how all of the world's oceans are connected to each other. Land is shown as darker portions on the map and take up the periphery. A map of ocean currents on the Spilhaus map projection, from https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/mapping/spilhaus-more-like-thrillhaus/   Or maybe you’re interested in how connected we all are, and you want to see all of the deep-sea cables AltText: Global map of submarine telecommunication cables, using a more standard projection, centred on the Atlantic Ocean, with land masses taking up most of the image From https://mastodon.energy/@pauleastwood/109649166925454437     Or maybe you’re wanting t...
Read more

Te Araroa Hiker's Almanac

Image
While walking, we talked about some of the lessons we learned on the trail. Here they are, distilled for you.  Once you've made a decision, stick to it (unless it is about to march you off of a cliff...). The back-and-forth will just add an hour to your day. Don't beat yourself up about yesterday. You can't change the past, so there's no purpose in thinking "what if?". But you can always learn from your past - both good and bad decisions! Have a long term destination (Cape Reinga) and a short-term destination (tonight's campsite; the next resupply town). Don't worry so much about the in between, it'll take care of itself. Check the map whenever you're unsure. Better to check more often. You know what? Just go ahead and check that map again... Enjoy the scenery along the way! Even when there isn't much of a view. You need less stuff than you think. Except food and wat...
Read more