News from Italy

For the moment we can forget about thunderstorms and TLEs in central Europe but it doesn't mean there is no action somewhere else!

December has been good so far for Italian observers in Medicina and elswhere as the CIPH-SOSO News blog reports.

CIPH-SOSO is part of the Italian Meteor and TLE Network, IMTN.

Thanks to Renzo C. for sharing the news.

An odd TLE detection from Central Europe

A huge thunderstorm swept through the common borders of Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic in Central Europe on the night of 2 July, 2012. The storm was producing TLEs all night. Martin Popek from the Czech Republic has set his camera in Nydek to watch the firework of sprites. The TLE camera in Sopron was monitoring the same thunderstorm, too.

Several sprites have been captured by both cameras, but around 20:40 UTC the system in Nydek recorded an odd sequence of emissions which was missed by the camera in Sopron. Flame-like emissions were shooting upwards. See the video! Comments are welcome.

Good start to TLE observation season in Central Europe

Both May and June 2012 have been great for TLE observations in Central Europe. Firstly, there are early May observations from the Czech Republic and from Poland. There are even more reported here, with some of the events captured simultaneously from two different locations.

This lonely column sprite was observed from Gliwice, Poland, on 11 May 2011.

But the night of 18/19 June 2012 has turned into a sprite observing spree at Swider geophysical station (central Poland) which had good view above a large storm sweeping across the north of Poland and the Baltic Sea coast. At least eleven events were recorded between 22:30 and 01 UT and more were missed by the recording system. There were plenty of sprites of all shapes and possibly dancing sprites. There are some examples (please mind the uncertainty of the time displayed on images is likely to be up to 1s, more photo information: A. Odzimek)

A couple of hours earlier sprites were also observed from Nydek. The HRV satellite image with overplotted lightning locations, below, shows how the situation was unfolding at 18 UT (please note the full functionality of this product is only at daytime). Recent images at 3-hour intervals are available from here.

Link to follow TLE observations from Central Europe


PS Update 29 June 2012, added more sprite images.

Color TLE images have been captured by Hungarian astronomers in South America

Hungarian astronomers visited Chile in March, 2012 to observe the Zodiac from a noise-free environment. On the night of 21^st March they monitored the horizon towards Argentina to the East where a thunderstorm swept through behind the mountain ridge of Andes.

 

During the night, seven TLEs were caught on camera between 04:52UT and 06:42 UT by applying a series of 8 second exposures and even more have been seen by naked eye. The camera was a Canon EOS 60D equipped with Sigma 18-50 mm lens used at 35mm/ISO2500 then later at 50mm/ISO6400. 

The captured TLEs were all very similar. Representative examples are shown below. The images are courtesy of Károly Jónás.

Camera directions were found by matching the star map with the images in UFO Analyzer. If the top of the diffuse emissions is assumed to lie at a height of 90 km, the visible sections of these events are at 67-90 km. Horizontal extensions of the diffuse tops then were 5.6-6.6 kms.

 

Were these events huge carrot sprites or gigantic jets? Comments are welcome!

Read the original post (in Hungarian) at http://www.idokep.hu/hirek/voros-lidercek-tanca

Bonus: time-lapse video of the Zodiac made by the group of Károly Jónás (no TLEs in this one, sorry :) : http://www.idokep.hu/keptar/album/Astronomia/kep/1080

Can you spot the meteor?