100 thousand frames per second: sprites on high-speed videos

How do sprites appear? Mysterious flashes of light in the sky, appearing only for a moment and resembling giant jellyfish, were recorded more than 30 years ago, but the root cause of their appearance remains unknown.

Some thunderstorms have them, but most don't. Recently, however, high-speed cameras have been helping to better detail how sprites actually evolve.

This video, shot in mid-2019 at approximately 100,000 frames per second, shows several sprites, the development of which resembles the explosion of fireworks.

Unfortunately, such videos can not help to completely solve the mystery of the origin of sprites. But, according to some researchers, they can conclude that sprites are more likely to occur when plasma inhomogeneities occur in the upper atmosphere.