Analysis and modeling of sprite green ghosts

Stenbaek‐Nielsen, H. C.; Ashcraft, Thomas; McHarg, Matthew; Harley, J.

doi:10.1002/essoar.10504953.1

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2023

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Cited by 2 publications

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“…They last less than 1 ms and look like very faint red "rings" with a diameter of more than 200 km [2]. GhOSTs were first observed in 2019, in a video of an intense red sprite event as a faint green afterglow on its top, persisting for about 1 s. These green emissions at 557.7 nm are possibly related to excited atomic oxygen due to electrons thermalized by the enhanced electric field, which caused the preceding sprite [10].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observations of Transient Luminous Events from Greece

Doudoulakis,

Papathanasiou,

Sagiakos

et al. 2023

Comecap 2023

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observations of Transient Luminous Events from Greece

Doudoulakis,

Papathanasiou,

Sagiakos

et al. 2023

Comecap 2023

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Spectroscopy of a mesospheric ghost reveals iron emissions

Passas-Varo,

Van der Velde,

Gordillo-Vázquez

et al. 2023

Nat Commun

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Mesospheric Green emissions from excited Oxygen in Sprite Tops (ghosts) are infrequent and faint greenish transient luminous events that remain for hundreds of milliseconds on top of certain energetic sprites. The main hypothesis to explain this glow persistence is the long lifetime of excited atomic oxygen at 557.73 nm, a well-known emission line in aurora and airglow. However, due to the lack of spectroscopic campaigns to analyse such events to date, the species involved in the process can not yet be identified. Here we report observational results showing the temporal evolution of a ghost spectrum between 500 nm and 600 nm. Besides weak -but certain- traces of excited atomic oxygen, our results show four main contributors related to the slow decay of the glow: atomic iron and nickel, molecular nitrogen and ionic molecular oxygen. Additionally, we are able to identify traces of atomic sodium, and ionic silicon, these observations being consistent with previous direct measurements of density profiles of meteoric metals in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. This finding calls for an upgrade of current air plasma kinetic understanding under the influence of transient luminous events.

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Analysis and modeling of sprite green ghosts

Cited by 2 publications

References 3 publications

Observations of Transient Luminous Events from Greece

Observations of Transient Luminous Events from Greece

Spectroscopy of a mesospheric ghost reveals iron emissions

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