Sprite above Austria: amateur colour photo from Hungary

I would like to share a story about a colour sprite photo from Mónika Landy-Gyebnár. She is a Hungarian amateur astronomist and was out to take noctilucent cloud pictures on the night of 19. June. Having no luck with her original purpose she aimed her camera at a storm approaching from North-West from Austria and she started to shoot frames continuously.



As she examined the photos later she has discovered a sprite on one of them!





The peculiar side of the story is that she took the picture at ISO400(!) with 13 second frame integration period. The camera was a Konica-Minolta Dynax 5D DSLR equipped with Sigma 20mm F1.8 DG RF lens. The actual F value, however, was 2.8.

The story was published online in Hungarian on the Hungarian news portal of astronomy.

Cheers, Jozsef

A good start of 2009 sprite observations in Central EU from Sopron

TLE observations in Central EU from Sopron in 2009 has officially started with a very good night last night. There was a rather big thundercloud system above Romania, moving in North-East direction.




This system has been producing sprites all night. UFO capture was triggered 111 times by sprites during the observations from ~ 21:02 UTC until down which means even more individual events (the number of individual sprite events has not been counted yet). Below are some examples:

A sprite with the moon.



More examples





A "good morning" sprite



The hunt continues this night with a smaller thunderstorm above Ukarine and Romania.

Last year's results along with these will be shown on the IAGA General Assembly in Sopron this August ( www.iaga2009sopron.hu ), where we will have a rich TLE session as well. I hope to welcome you there. Cheers, Jozsef

Big sprite on April 21st 2009

I just had my first use of the Computar 8-48mm f/1.2 zoom lens on sprites last night (21-22 April). A thunderstorm of unexpected proportions (mesoscale convective system) developed south of the French coast and when I installed the camera I got sprites within the first few minutes already. The thunderstorm was only 140 km away from me. To my surprise the second event was huge. Here is a snapshot image for now, I will soon publish sprite images to my website (also a lot of 2008) which will have better appearance (I am combining stacked video and noise-reduced stills).

Clouds interfered with the observation, 6 sprites were recorded between 2058 and 2151 UT, and some Lyrid meteors.

Update on TLE observations by Italian Meteor and TLE Network

News from Roberto Labanti on developement of TLEs observations in Italy:

"The end of 2008 was a lucky period for sprite captures in Italy and enlargement of the network of active observers, now all linked through the Italian Meteor and TLE Network internet forum.

In November, CIPH SOSO Idice got 4 events during night-time of 4/11 and 30/11. Diego Valeri/ITA.TOR. station near Rieti in Central Italy got its first two sprites in the evening of 26/11. In December two successful observations followed: Ferruccio Zanotti got a series of sprites on 11/12 and 14/12 from Olbia, Sardinia, and Nico Montigiani got his 3 events between 17/12 and 18/12, observed from near Florence.

Recently, for a good start of 2009, Ferruccio Zanotti caught three sprite events between 17h35m and 17h59m UT on February 10th, and other five events between 00h23m and 03h05m UT the same night (11 February), over a thunderstorm presumably over the northern Adriatic Sea and Veneto region - all from his station of Ferrara in northern Italy. The sprites were low on the horizon and probably quite distant from the recording station.

The images of February events are available here, on CIPH-SOSO blog, courtesy of Ferruccio Zanotti. The image here shows an event (circled) which occurred on 11 February, about 00:37:37 UT.

More events (6+1) were observed from Ferrera on 17 and 18 February and February 24th."