Sprites observed from Italy

Message from Roberto Labanti, Italy:

On the night of 4-5 September the Italian Committee for Project Hessdalen (http://www.itacomm.net/ph) recorded sprites from the Smart Optical Sensors Observatory (SOSO) at San Lazzaro di Savena (lat. 44° 27' 18".19 N, lon. 11° 26' 52".12 E, 65 m), Italy.

The camera used was a Mintron MTV-12V1-EX with a Tamron 6 mm F/1.2 auto-iris (DC type) lens - 54.58° x 43.43° field of view, centered on the azimuth of 127° 14' 47" and the height 43° 53' 21". The system works automatically from 18:30 to 03:00 UTC.

That night a storm moving South-Southeast passed above the station and met another storm above the Adriatic Sea moving South (between 60 and 150 km of distance from San Lazzaro di Savena, in the East/South-East).

After reviewing the automatic video recordings in the next morning, 5 September, Renzo Cabassi and Massimo Silvestri found at least 11 different sprite events which occurred between 23:30 and 03:00 UTC.

All relevant video recordings could be found here.