Recently, the news that “Chinese photographers captured a lot of elves lightning in Tibet, breaking many records” has spread all over the country and abroad.
On the night that the astrophotographer took them on May 19, I saw their amazing discovery in a private message, and I had a hunch that this discovery would be popular.
Because I, who have been paying attention to and obsessed with various sky wonders for many years, know that this achievement is of great significance!
elves lightning, no longer lonely
Sure enough, within two days, the news detonated the Internet at home and abroad; the word “elves lightning” became a hot news keyword for the first time in history and was widely seen by the Chinese people.
Just a few years ago, elves lightning was the most mysterious and least visible “legendary” natural phenomenon in the world.
So, what exactly is elves lightning?
elves lightning is actually another name for “Transient Luminous Events” (TLEs). Because it is better to remember and has a magical taste than this obscure six-character term, people who like the wonders of the sky generally prefer to call it elves lightning.
Translating the term into words, it is “a type of atmospheric luminescence event that appears in the super-altitude in an instant”.
For a moment, how many moments? ——Usually only a few microseconds to tens of microseconds, and some types of elf lightning even emit light for less than 1 microsecond. Note that 1 microsecond is 1/1000 of a second! It’s not enough to describe the instant level of Elf Lightning.
Speaking of super high altitude, how high is it? – From ten kilometers to more than 90 kilometers. Do you think it’s too high to fly? However, the cruising altitude of civil airliners is generally several kilometers to early 10,000 meters. Taking the red sprite as an example, its altitude range is usually 50-90 kilometers, which is several times higher than that of civil airliners.
At such a high altitude, Elf Lightning is often referred to as “lightning that shoots into space”.
How high is space? The definition is not unique, but the mainstream definition believes that more than 100~110 kilometers can be regarded as space. In this sense, some types of elf lightning are really close to the edge of space.
The difference from ordinary lightning
Compared with the ordinary thunder and lightning that people are familiar with, elf lightning is a completely different kind of natural phenomenon.
The height of elf lightning is much higher than that of ordinary lightning, and it does not have the high temperature of tens of thousands of degrees Celsius of ordinary lightning. It is a kind of “cold discharge” phenomenon.
Morphologically, ELVES lightning has various exotic shapes, which are quite different from ordinary lightning.
The domestic organization astronomy enthusiasts have shown the morphological diagrams of the main known elf lightning types, from which they can see those strange and highly diverse appearances.
However, although they are two very different phenomena, they are also closely related – ELVES lightning is caused by some ordinary lightning.
When the current of ordinary lightning is particularly large, it transfers a large amount of electric charge at once, causing some form of mutation of the atmospheric electric field, which in turn causes the appearance of different types of elf lightning high in the sky. It can be said that some very strong and violent thunderbolts are the mother of elf lightning.
In the video shot, many such scenes can be seen: after the strong thunder and lightning flashing in the sky, the red elf appears.
So, a key trick to finding ELVES lightning is to look for an unusually powerful thunderstorm cloud first – ELVES lightning has a certain chance of appearing above a powerful thunderstorm cloud.
The Chinese finally photographed the “ghost spirit”
elves lightning is also quite different from ordinary lightning in color.
Typical colors of elves lightning, including red and blue
Typical colors of ELVES lightning, divided into red and blue
You may think that there is nothingness in the picture? No, no, please make up your mind to be blind, and I believe you can feel the greenness.
But don’t underestimate this smear of green, this is a brand-new mysterious natural phenomenon, and its principle is still unknown. However, scholars at home and abroad generally speculate that this is a very strong energy that stimulates the oxygen in the atmosphere and emits green light.
Oxygen, not nitrogen, for the first time in the ELVES lightning family. This newly discovered, ultra-rare ghost fire spirit is destined to be triggered only by the most powerful spirit lightning individuals.
The short-lived and unpredictable red elf is extremely difficult to capture. Humans first discovered it in 1989, but it was not until the past decade or so that high-definition images increased slightly. And the green ghost fire elf, which is much weaker than the red elf, has only been photographed by a few people in the world so far!
But Chinese photographers got it, and many more, and it’s clearer than before. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to for many years, and it represents a milestone in the field of Chinese exploration and documentation of natural wonders.
A difficult history of image advancement
Not only the world-class images of the ghost fire elves, but also several other types of elves and lightning were captured by the two of them so wonderfully!
The image history of Elf Lightning is a history of human modern scientific exploration and a history of the progress of scientific photography.
Recalling that in 1989, when someone accidentally photographed a “mysterious object” for the first time, as the first recognized elf lightning photo in human history, the picture quality was so fuzzy just like a joke.
Don’t underestimate the picture. As a new discovery of the upper atmosphere phenomenon, it is of great significance. It was directly published in science. To study and explore elves lightning, especially to discover new types of elves lightning and to decipher its principle, is really “science.jpg can be sent in case of this”.
This kind of mysterious, fleeting, unpredictable and extremely difficult to capture evidence of natural phenomena soon became the top topic of “mystery” and “unsolved mystery”.
Through a large amount of investment and unremitting efforts, in the mid-1990s, human beings obtained the first color image of the red spirit. The quality of the picture is also indescribable.
In the new century, with the popularity of digital cameras, the images of elves lightning have increased slightly. But it’s only a little bit — for rare species like giant jets, until 10 years ago, only a dozen high-definition images had been released around the world.
In recent years, photographers have found that the long exposure shooting method used before is wrong. What is really suitable for shooting elves lightning is to use the ultra-high sensitivity camera for continuous recording, which can avoid “completely covering the shimmer of elves lightning in a short moment due to the bright background during long exposure”, thus greatly improving the capture rate of elves lightning.
The types of elves lightning are:
1.Sprite
2. Gigantic Jet
3. Secondary Jet，or Troll
4. Sprite with halo
5. Ghost
This time, these strange looking, magical and detailed pictures marked that the “elves lightning shot by Chinese people” has greatly improved to the world-class level.
We have popularized the above shooting method of elves lightning in China for several years. Driven by the actual successful cases, it is believed that more photographers and spectacle lovers in China will join the team of efficiently capturing elves lightning!
Now, the spirit lightning is no longer the “most mysterious existence in this world” at the beginning. Human beings have the technology to capture high-definition spirit images in large quantities, and the principle of the spirit is being gradually cracked. The discovery of the spirit of ghost fire indicates that “there are probably more undiscovered wonders in nature”.
If a new kind of elves lightning can be found in the future, I hope the discoverer is Chinese.
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