Sum of 25 images taken with my
RMS IT0004 camera in Italy near Macerata in the evening of 4 october 2021.
Sprites or
red sprites are large-scale
electric discharges that occur high above
thunderstorm clouds, or
cumulonimbus, giving rise to a quite varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky. They are usually triggered by the discharges of
positive lightning between an underlying
thundercloud and the ground.
Sprites appear as luminous red-orange flashes. They often occur in clusters above the
troposphere at an altitude range of 50–90 km (31–56 mi). Sporadic visual reports of sprites go back at least to 1886
[1] but they were first photographed on July 4, 1994, by scientists from the
University of Minnesota and have subsequently been captured in video recordings many thousands of times.
Sprites are sometimes inaccurately called
upper-atmospheric lightning. However, sprites are cold
plasma phenomena that lack the hot channel temperatures of
tropospheric lightning, so they are more akin to
fluorescent tube discharges than to lightning discharges. Sprites are associated with various other upper-atmospheric
optical phenomena including
blue jets and
ELVES.
(Wikipedia)
Space is fun [citation needed]. How about exploring secrets of the cosmos, but without NASA’s budget?
Average shooting stars, also known as meteors, are caused by pea-sized pieces of space rocks left behind by a comet. Observing those fragments as they ignite in Earth’s atmosphere can give us their orbits, which means you know from which part of the Solar System they came from. In cases of very bright meteors (aka fireballs), it is even possible to retrieve a fallen rock! How cool is that?!?
The goal of this project is to observe meteors, by a global network of cameras pointed at the night sky. Each camera is connected to a Raspberry Pi running open-source software for video capture, compression and meteor detection.
In other words, with a meteor station on your house you’re exploring the Solar System’s formation and evolution!
Global Meteor Network
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