Jellyfish-like spurts of electricity recently lit up the sky over Puerto Rico in a rare natural event scarcely ever caught on camera. Known as “gigantic jets” or “giant sprites”, the electrical discharges are similar to so-called “red sprites” – although they are even more intense and rise upwards into the atmosphere, rather than zapping down towards the ground.
Footage of the light show was captured in the early hours of Sunday, August 4, during a barrage of thunderstorms in Puerto Rico and shared by the Caribbean Astronomy Society.
While reviewing images of meteors seen from the island, the organization’s astronomers realized their cameras had captured at least three gigantic jets, as well as some red sprites.
“The images we obtained suggest that these discharges that were seen from the Island must have had a longer duration than usual. So much so that probably some people could have seen them,” the Caribbean Astronomy Society said in a Facebook post.
After they shared the news with their followers on Facebook, several people came forward and confirmed that they managed to see the spectacle with their naked eyes.
Gigantic jets are the rarest form of lightning, occurring just 1,000 times a year. They are around 10-50 times more intense than regular lightning and last for less than a second. They tend to be associated with thunderstorms and occur high above the clouds. The light they produce appears red due to a reaction with nitrogen in the mesosphere, about 50 to 85 kilometers (31 to 52 miles) above the Earth’s surface.
Remarkably, they were not caught on camera until 1989, confirming the anecdotal reports of people seeing strange red flashes of lights during thunderstorms (many of whom must have thought their eyes were playing tricks on them).
As NASA has previously explained, the cause of gigantic jets isn’t yet clear, although it will likely have something to do with an imbalance between different parts of Earth’s atmosphere, just like more “traditional” forms of lightning.
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