Normally when it rains, people don’t usually stop looking up at the sky because water gets into their eyes. But those who direct their cameras towards the clouds can observe spectacular phenomena that most of us do not fully appreciate. Such was the case with Stephen Hummel and his incredible ‘red jellyfish’.
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On July 2, Stephen Hummel, a dark sky photographer at the McDonald Observatory, was able to capture during a thunderstorm in Texas a rare flashing red formation known as sprite. For a split second, this sprite It was shaped like a giant red jellyfish, 50 kilometers long.
Also known as red spectra, sprites are such extraordinary phenomena that they were only discovered in 1989. But it is not that they occur rarely, rather they are very difficult to see since they occur above the clouds and disappear as quickly as they manifest .
“The sprites, or red jellyfish, generally appear as gray, faint and very brief structures. You must be looking for them to spot them and I’m often not sure I’ve seen one until I check the camera footage to confirm it. “
Mr. Hummel spoke with Business Insider about his capture, which went viral on Instagram. Capturing sprites is an exercise that requires a lot of patience; In this case, almost 5 hours had to pass for the photographer to capture his red jellyfish.
“All in all, I’ve probably shot about 70 hours of footage and stills this year, and I’ve captured about 70 sprites,” half of these during the same storm.
Check out Mr. Hummel’s video below:
Not all sprites are red or jellyfish shaped. Some look like ordinary lightning bolts, except for the detail that they shoot out into space.
The red spectrum consists of sprites, that is, electrical discharges that occur during storms, but instead of hitting the ground, they shoot out into space. It is in the mesosphere where they acquire a red-orange color and can reach from 50 to 90 kilometers in altitude.
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With information from Business Insider.
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