New observations of sprites from the space shuttle

Abstract

[1] We present the results of space-based observations of sprites obtained during the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment (MEIDEX) sprite campaign conducted on board the space shuttle Columbia during its STS-107 mission in January 2003. A total of $6 hours of useful data were saved from 21 different orbits, of which 1/5 contained lightning. We imaged sprites from an altitude of 280 km using a calibrated multispectral camera above thunderstorms in various geographical locations, mainly in central Africa, northern Australia, and South America, and also over the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In this paper we report on sprites observed from ranges 1600-2000 km from the shuttle, at altitudes of 40-90 km above the ground. Their brightness was in the range of 0.3-1.7 mega-Rayleighs (MR) in the 665 nm filter and 1.44-1.7 MR in the 860 nm filter. On the basis of the frequency of observed events and the number of tropical thunderstorms, we estimate the sprite rate in the tropics to be of the order of several per minute.

Analysis of lightning strokes associated with sprites observed by ISUAL in the vicinity of North America

“…Red sprites, as one major type of lightning-induced transient luminous events (TLEs) above thunderstorms, are short-lived (typically < 20 ms) structured optical emissions that could be observed from both ground-based (Franz et al 1990;Boccippio et al 1995;Lyons 1996;Yair et al 2015) and space-borne platforms (Yair et al 2004;Chen et al 2008;Jehl et al 2013;Sato et al 2015). The broad connection between sprites and energetic cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning strokes has been established by concurrent recording of distinct radio frequency electromagnetic pulses commonly registered upon the sprite observation (Reising et al 1996;Cummer et al 1998;Huang et al 1999;Li et al 2008;Lu et al 2013).…”

Detection efficiency of the VLF World-Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN): initial case study

“…For many scientific applications, the benefits of a global overview in real time can outweigh the very low total lightning detection. Observations of red sprites undertaken from the space shuttle Columbia during the ill-fated STS107 mission used WWLLN activity maps (Yair et al, 2004), allowing some predication of where active thunderstorms containing the large lightning events associated with transient luminous events (e.g., sprites) would be located.…”

The Middle Atmosphere: Discharge Phenomena

“…Using an image-intensified Xybin IMC-201 camera, 17 TLEs were identified ( 7 sprites and 10 elves) along with additional 20 probable events. Their brightness in the 665 nm filter is determined to be in the range of 0.3-1.7 MR and 1.44-1.7 MR in the 860-nm filter (Israelevich et al, 2004;Yair et al, 2004).…”

“…The Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment (MEIDEX) sprite campaign was conducted on board the space shuttle Columbia (Yair et al, 2003;Yair et al, 2004;Yair, 2006) during the STS-107 mission in January 2003. Using an image-intensified Xybin IMC-201 camera, 17 TLEs were identified ( 7 sprites and 10 elves) along with additional 20 probable events.…”