[HN Gopher] The most otherworldly, mysterious forms of lightning...
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       The most otherworldly, mysterious forms of lightning on Earth
        
       Author : Anon84
       Score  : 43 points
       Date   : 2025-07-06 12:49 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com)
        
       | pbarry25 wrote:
       | https://archive.is/7kAwt
        
       | nla wrote:
       | Why is there a paywall article on the front of Hacker News?
        
         | thunderbong wrote:
         | From the FAQ
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
         | 
         | > It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have
         | workarounds.
        
       | the_arun wrote:
       | NG forces people to enter email address without a close button.
        
         | n1b0m wrote:
         | I was able to close it
        
       | mock-possum wrote:
       | > Not only did the photographers capture a significant number of
       | red sprites, the Himalayan storm also featured even rarer TLEs
       | called jets and ghosts. The team found 16 secondary jets,
       | powerful columns of often blue or purple light darting upwards
       | into the sky, and at least four ghosts, green hazy glows that can
       | sometimes hover above red sprites.
       | 
       | Oddly we will just have to take the author's word for it, because
       | no photographs depicting those rarer TLEs appear in this article.
        
       | neom wrote:
       | Cool TLE photo from an astronaut couple days ago:
       | https://x.com/Astro_Ayers/status/1940810789830451563
        
         | cs702 wrote:
         | Just, wow.
         | 
         | I've never seen anything like that.
         | 
         | Thank you for sharing it on HN!
        
           | lbeckman314 wrote:
           | We're spoiled in terms of cool astronauts! A couple of
           | personal favorite posts:
           | 
           | 1. Jonny Kim: https://www.instagram.com/p/DKkj52PuO6h/
           | 
           | > My first time-lapse. Thanks to some instruction and tips
           | from @Astro_Ayers, I caught my first aurora. After seeing the
           | result, I told her this felt like fishing. Prepping the
           | camera, the angle, the settings, the mount, then setting your
           | timer and coming back to hope you got a catch. And after
           | catching my first fish, I think I'm hooked. Thanks, Vapor!
           | 
           | ------
           | 
           | 2. Don Petit: https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/xbmhz4/
           | i_captured_so...
           | 
           | > These are Star Trails taken from my previous mission to the
           | ISS, Expedition 30, in 2012. I call it "Lightning Bugs."...
           | In the photo, stars make arcing trails in deep space, while a
           | huge thunderstorm pounds Earth below as seen from the time
           | history of lightning flashes.
           | 
           | https://web.archive.org/web/20250215124004/https://blogs.nas.
           | ..
        
       | foxglacier wrote:
       | The trouble with fancy photography (which National Geographic is
       | famous for) is it can make things look far more spectacular or
       | "otherworldly" than real life. Apparently this lightning can't
       | usually be seen by people, occur above the clouds, and in the
       | blink of an eye. You could be looking right at it and not notice
       | anything otherworldly. Well that's not impressive. You can also
       | see otherworldly things just by watching water move up close or
       | looking at space through a telescope, or using an instrument to
       | visualize EM fields or whatever. I expect those things to be
       | otherworldly because they are.
        
         | dfedbeef wrote:
         | I think it's ok to think they're all interesting
        
       | adolph wrote:
       | The article links to a photographer of the phenomena which
       | arguably has better info than the article.
       | 
       | https://paulmsmithphotography.com/pages/what-are-red-sprites...
       | Sprites get their characteristic red color from excitation of
       | nitrogen in        the low pressure environment of the upper
       | mesosphere. At such low        pressures quenching by atomic
       | oxygen is much faster than that of        nitrogen, allowing for
       | nitrogen emissions to dominate despite no        difference in
       | composition. As the atmospheric pressure increases in the
       | lower atmosphere, the red emissions are quenched and blue
       | emissions from        atmospheric nitrogen excitation dominate. .
       | .
        
       | chias wrote:
       | This article eventually links you to it, but what you probably
       | want to look at is this: https://spritacular.org/gallery
       | 
       | (photos of these forms of lightning)
        
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       (page generated 2025-07-09 23:00 UTC)