Jakarta –
A photographer intends to find a storm to capture, but what he gets is astounding. He captured a rare red glow in the night sky of Arizona, USA.
Greg McCown led a hurricane photo tour on June 16. It’s a shame that there was no storm that day. So McCown took the party to Windy Point at the top of Mount Lemmon.
“A major storm is moving down in Mexico about 150 miles south of our position at Windy Point lining up perfectly with the Milky Way’s core,” McCown explained. “After some instruction on how to photograph stars, most of our group were able to capture these elusive gems.”
The red light that Greg captured was not a laser weapon or an alien attack. That’s just a natural phenomenon often called a Sprite.
What are Sprites?
Sprites, a phenomenon discovered only about 20 years ago, are lightning discharges into the upper atmosphere. They occur about 50 to 90 kilometers above the storm, emerging moments after the lightning strike.
Its unique shape is similar to a thunderbolt, but the sprites have a stunning red or pink color. They look like flashes of light shooting up from thunderclouds.
Red lightning sprites are formed as a result of lightning activity. When lightning triggers a powerful electrical spike, an enormous electric field is created between the thundercloud and the upper atmosphere. This field affects the gases in the upper atmosphere, causing the gas particles to become ionized. As a result, there is a flash of light that produces stunning sprites.
Red lightning sprites were a rare phenomenon and hard to observe. They usually occur in less than a second, making them very brief events.
Additionally, red lightning sprites appear in layers of the atmosphere that are too high to be visible from the Earth’s surface directly. Researchers and observers of natural phenomena use advanced technology such as telescopes and special cameras to record sprites.
The sprite’s beauty lies in its intense red or pink color. This light forms a stunning pattern resembling an upturned tree. Although difficult to observe in person, the images and videos of the sprites captured offer stunning and inspiring views.
“I’ve photographed them about five times before,” McCown told PetaPixel. “As soon as we saw a major hurricane coming down over Mexico on the radar, we knew we had a good chance.”
McCown used a Nikon Z6 and a 50mm lens to capture the Sprites from the top of Mount Lemmon while most of his tour participants used their multiple cameras to capture the phenomenon.
“The city lights you’re looking at are the far east side of Tucson. A dark night and a clear sky with a distant storm are the best conditions for viewing/photographing them,” explains McCown.
Watch Video “Strange Natural Phenomenon in the Black Sea, Seabed River!”
(afr/afr)
2023-08-16 00:45:29
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