First sprites observed from Poland

Last night the Leicester SPARTAN Sprite-Watch team recorded sprites from the IMGW meteorological observatory at Sniezka (50^o 44' 09'' N, 15^o 44' 21'' E, 1603 m), Poland.

Several thunderstorm systems over Germany, Czech Republic and Poland were active in the afternoon and evening of 20 July, evolving and moving to the east during the night.

At the beginning of observations we were very near a thunderstorm ourselves and just before it was right above us we got a clear view. Around 20:10:08 UTC we caught the first sprites of our campaign, in the north-north-west direction from the observatory. Later in the evening we pointed our camera south-south-west towards a thunderstorm in Czech Republic and we caught another one at 00:18:46 UTC.

Update (30 June 2008): The exact time intervals of the video frames containing the sprite events are published here. In total four events have been observed.