Did you know that storm clouds have a whole other world of flashing lights
just above them above the storms red jelly fish shaped lights blue streaks
and huge donut shaped halos flash they're called transient luminous events
or T. L. Es The T. L. Es we see most often are called sprites elves and blue Jets
but before we get any further with those let's take a look at what lightning is
lightning is caused by electrical charges in clouds these electrical
charges are created when ice snow and water droplets in thunderstorms collide
at high speed all of those collisions build up static
electricity in the cloud and the charges can be huge if they separate the lower
part of the cloud becomes negatively charged while the upper part of the
cloud can be positively charged the positive and negative charges cancel
each other out by shooting electricity between them and that electricity is
lightning. When a lightning bolt strikes the ground it can leave the top of the
thunderstorm with some negative charge this creates bursts of electromagnetic
activity in the upper atmosphere it's believed that those bursts are T. L. Es the
sprites the elves and the blue jets sprite stands for stratospheric
mesospheric perturbations resulting from intense thunderstorm electrification
sprites start as a huge ball of red light with tendrils that stream down and
turn purple then below L stands for emissions of
light and very low frequency perturbations due to electromagnetic
pulse sources elves start out as a flash of light that ripples out into a flat
disc of glowing red purple light kind of like a halo a huge donut in the sky
Blue jets are blue. And Blue Jets stands for blue jets, no acronym here
they shoot up from the top of storm clouds in the shape of narrow blue cones
and they are fast they reach speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second and as
they shoot up they fan out and disappear so the next time you're watching some
crazy lightning just to imagine the colorful light show that could be
happening just above those clouds