The Revenge of the Sprites - 17 sprites on 17 November
November 17th. You thought it wouldn't happen anymore this year? Just two days after the dismantling of the camera at Pic du Midi, a thunderstorm system grew over the Mediterranean coast of France. Here in Toulouse we had perfectly clear conditions, so we've set up the camera system on the roof of our lab during dusk. Initially we pointed east and we got a distant thunderstorm flash in view, so it seemed good! Serge left to visit a theater show.
After a look at the radar I decided I had to point more towards the northeast, to the stratiform precipitation region. At 19:09 UTC the first sprite appeared in the left side of the image, so after this I pointed even more northeastward and after that ...a total of 17 beautiful sprites happened full in view! The last one occurred at 20:52 UTC, so on average there was a sprite every 6 minutes.
Meanwhile I swept the excessive dew from the equipment and tried to see sprites by myself, but I couldn't see any of them this time.
Enjoy these! They are raw event summary images from UFOCapture.
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14: dedicated to my girlfriend Carmen, who sms'ed me back that she is my 14th sprite:
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As you can see, most sprites were carrots! Several of them have relatively small bodies but tall branches. Big groups filled the whole field of view, I couldn't stop grinning! :-] The lightning flashes that preceded the sprites were also visible and all traveled from right to left.
Serge came back from the theater half an hour after the last sprite occurred. It appears we each had our own theater ;-)
After that it slowly became foggy, and the storm did not come back into a good shape.
A very good observations night, of which I consider the period 1912-2130 UTC fully documented, with our newly arrived GPS video time inserter up and running!
After a look at the radar I decided I had to point more towards the northeast, to the stratiform precipitation region. At 19:09 UTC the first sprite appeared in the left side of the image, so after this I pointed even more northeastward and after that ...a total of 17 beautiful sprites happened full in view! The last one occurred at 20:52 UTC, so on average there was a sprite every 6 minutes.
Meanwhile I swept the excessive dew from the equipment and tried to see sprites by myself, but I couldn't see any of them this time.
Enjoy these! They are raw event summary images from UFOCapture.
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:
10:
11:
12:
13:
14: dedicated to my girlfriend Carmen, who sms'ed me back that she is my 14th sprite:
15:
16:
17:
As you can see, most sprites were carrots! Several of them have relatively small bodies but tall branches. Big groups filled the whole field of view, I couldn't stop grinning! :-] The lightning flashes that preceded the sprites were also visible and all traveled from right to left.
Serge came back from the theater half an hour after the last sprite occurred. It appears we each had our own theater ;-)
After that it slowly became foggy, and the storm did not come back into a good shape.
A very good observations night, of which I consider the period 1912-2130 UTC fully documented, with our newly arrived GPS video time inserter up and running!
posted by Oscar van der Velde at 01:37
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