Author: Jessica Leigh Hester / Source: Atlas Obscura
In folklore, sprites and elves flit and frolic amid mushrooms and moss. According to astronauts and atmospheric scientists, they also live high up in the sky, too, in the form of mesmerizing weather patterns.
With a new tool on the International Space Station, researchers are about to learn a lot more about them.On Earth, we’re used to seeing lightning shooting downward, in the direction of the ground. In the stratosphere, mesosphere, and ionosphere—roughly 31 to 62 miles above storm clouds—sprites and other so-called Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) crack the other way. The dazzling electrical discharges often accompany thunderstorms, but they’re not quite lightning. Blue jets and red sprites spark like fireworks, shooting flares up higher into the darkness, and dangling tentacles beneath them. Elves are electromagnetic pulses that flash horizontally and vanish in milliseconds. (Their name is generally lowercased, but it’s technically a fanciful acronym to shorten “Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency Perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources.”)
Because they manifest so quickly and so far from us, these otherworldly weather entities…
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