An astronomer in Slovakia captured the rare luminous phenomenon as it briefly flashed in Earth's upper atmosphere during a thunderstorm.

Eerie, ultra-detailed photo of a lightning ‘sprite’ exposes one of nature’s least understood phenomena::An astronomer in Slovakia captured the rare luminous phenomenon as it briefly flashed in Earth’s upper atmosphere during a thunderstorm.

  • @BertramDitoreEnglish
    17•1 year ago

    Here’s a link to the three full-sized photos in case anyone else was annoyed that an article describing an ultra-detailed photo only included low-res thumbnails.

    • MaggiWuerzeEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Thanks. I never understood why it seems to be too hard to actually show what your writing about.

  • @fuboEnglish
    15•1 year ago

    We’re so used to having the atmosphere just hang out and just be there for breathing.

    Yeah, it turns out that molecules have other shit to do in this solar system, even if they’re also being part of our atmosphere. They get charged up sometimes, from the sun’s energy or just from moving around each other, and they do weird stuff like auroras or lightning sprites.

    • @AbidanYreEnglish
      7•1 year ago

      Right, so…

      Ghost aliens.

    • sebinspaceEnglish
      6•1 year ago

      Even if they are just “weird stuff”, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim to understand them and make them less weird

  • @[email protected]English
    4•1 year ago

    I did a school report on lightning 20(!) Years ago and included these. It’s strange we seem to know little more about them other than having better photos now.

  • @[email protected]English
    1•1 year ago

    I’m playing Armored Core 6 rn and these give me PTSD flashbacks of the bosses’ Coral weapons