Often the parent storm is so far that it is below the horizon, so only sprites appear. Under a really dark sky – rural skies far from light pollution or high in the mountains, also far from light pollution – they can be seen as brief flashes above distant thunderstorms. Sprites are by far the most frequent and they are the most likely to be seen. You can actually *see* Transient Luminous Events. Seeing Transient Luminous Events – with your own eyes Sprite photographed from the International Space Station above a thunderstorm over NW Mexico on August 10, 2015. Other: sprite halos and elves are rare and indistinct types of TLEs, producing large diffuse glows, in case of elves up to 400 km in diameter.Only a handful have been photographed or captured on video. The upper parts of gigantic jets produce red emissions, similar to sprites. Gigantic jets: are similar to blue jets, but reach 70 km high and are exceedingly rare.A smaller variation of blue jets are blue starters, which are similar to blue jets, but only reach about 20 km high up and are thought to be ‘failed’ blue jets. They are not connected to lightning strikes. Unlike sprites, blue jets are, as the name implies, blue in color. Blue jets: project directly from the top of the thunderstorm in a narrow cone jet up to approximately 50 km altitude.Based on their shape and visual appearance, we distinguish three types of sprites: jellyfish, column and carrot sprites. Unlike tropospheric lightning, sprites are cold plasma, similar to fluorescent tube discharge. Sprite is also an acronym for Stratospheric/mesospheric Perturbations Resulting from Intense Thunderstorm Electrification. Sprites: reach 50 – 90 km in altitude and are triggered by positive CG lightning.The most common and well known are sprites, but there is a number of other types too: There are many types of Transient Luminous Events. Using low light digital cameras, the upper atmosphere is now routinely detected and recorded at increasingly high resolutions. It was confirmed, photographically, on July 6, 1989, by scientists of the University of Minnesota. There is anecdotal evidence of sightings of upper atmosphere lightning, or Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), at least as far back as the 1730s, while proper visual reports of sightings go back to 1886. If ordinary lightning seems pretty ordinary, upper atmosphere lightning is something else – an entire ZOO of various types of upper atmosphere electrical discharges.
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