Sprites 25-26 October and 28-29 October

It should now be clear what the real sprite season is! Not the summer, but the fall season with numerous thunderstorms over the Mediterranean Sea.

During the night of 25-26 October the Pic du Midi camera was operated after 23 UTC and caught 4 sprites south of the Mediterranean coast of France (west of Corsica).



During the night of 28-29 October the Pic du Midi camera only ran reliably after about 2300 or 0000 UT and caught 10 sprites, again near the southeast coast of Spain. This time it was clear also in Lannemezan, operated by Serge Soula, who obtained 22 sprites. Again, Pic du Midi did not trigger on the weaker events, so it needs to be tuned better for next year.
In both nights the moonlight on the clouds and mountains added a nice atmosphere to the images :)

Pic du Midi:


Lannemezan (fireball! -peakhold image):



This is the same sprite as shown above for Pic du Midi. This is a peakhold image, so stars show up better and is less noisy. The Watec 902H2 Supreme does not feature manual gain control, and the lowest gain setting is actually too high for the brightest sprites, losing detail. On the other hand, the camera at Pic du Midi, a 2/3rd inch JAI, is not as sensitive but captures brighter parts with fine nuances (even better in the raw image than in the picture shown) and higher resolution .