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Lightning That Shoots Straight Into Space

8.25.09 - Some of you might be scared of it. Usually you see it flashing downwards from the sky followed by thunder. Lightning is an atmospheric discharge of electricity accompanied by thunder. Now for the first time researchers discovered a different type of lightning -- lightning that shoots straight into the upper atmosphere.

Steven Cummer and his team from the Duke University in North Carolina have captured a snapshot of this rarely-seen phenomenon. With a very lucky shot, the scientists captured a one-second image and the electrical fingerprint of huge lightning that flowed 40 miles upward from the top of a storm.

These events are known as gigantic jets, and they flash up to the lower levels of space, or ionosphere.

"Despite poor viewing conditions as a result of a full moon and a hazy atmosphere, we were able to clearly capture the gigantic jet," said Steven Cummer.

Cummer caught the gigantic jet almost by accident. The team wanted to capture another phenomenon known as sprites, which were first photographed in 1989. Sprites are large scale electrical discharges which occur high above a thunderstorm cloud giving rise to a quite varied range of visual shapes. They are triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between the thundercloud and the ground. They normally are colored reddish-orange or greenish-blue, with hanging jellyfish-like tendrils hanging down.

Sprites high above a thunderstorm clouds

A paper reporting Cummer's results appeared online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The entire team at the Duke University that captured the event was Jingbo Li, Feng Han, Gaopeng Lu and Nicolas Jaugey.

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