Green ghosts: a new addition to the family cosmic lightning

Want to discover something new? Follow the tops of storm clouds. Sprites, elves, jets — these unusual phenomena are still surprising researchers, watching the cloud tops since the 1980-ies.

In addition, just discovered another phenomenon — the green Ghost.

Thomas Eshkraft took it off over new Mexico may 25 — after a flash of red sprites for a few seconds, the green afterglow.

As he noted in scientific journals no of articles regarding this phenomenon. Green ghosts was discovered only a year earlier by Hank PWM hunter storms from Houston, Texas. According to him, 25 may 2019, he took video of a few sprites during a storm in Oklahoma, however, when he later viewed the material, we noticed a mysterious green afterglow on some of the larger sprites.

Eshkraft announced that have removed the green Ghost in 2014, however, according to him, he did not understand what it is.

Shima worked closely with another hunter Groz — Paul Smith. They said that he had shared these with staff scientists and people in social networks. Informed about this phenomenon, no one heard. Many claimed that this glow may be caused by the features of the camera. However, over the next weeks and months, Paul Smith has captured many other green ghosts in high resolution.

At the moment no one knows exactly what causes the appearance of green ghosts. Their color can be a clue. Green is usually observed in the auroras and the glow of the atmosphere, these phenomena in the upper atmosphere, acquire a green hue due to excited oxygen atoms.

The same can be said of green ghosts. When the tops of the powerful sprites hit the layer where the glow of the atmosphere at the altitude of 90 km above the surface, the oxygen atoms can, for a short time to glow green. This hypothesis is correct or not, but it and gave the phenomenon a name — the ghost ("Ghost"). As explained Shima, stands for green emissions from excited oxygen in the sprite top ("the green glow of excited oxygen at the vertices of the sprites").

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»