Have you ever wondered about the numerous experiments being done on the International Space Station (ISS)? What do astronauts study in this orbiting laboratory?
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Well, of course, there are many things, but one of them is the weather: especially the kind of weather events that can’t be seen from Earth. These are called blue jets and elves (short for Very Low Frequency Light Emissions and Disturbances due to Electromagnetic Dust Sources), and their tracking is possible thanks to a European tool called the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) observatory.
ASIM, installed on the space station in 2018, consists of a collection of optical cameras, photometers and an X-ray detector and range and is there to detect electrical discharges from meteorological events that can only be seen in the ‘space. Understanding these galactic meteorological events is crucial to understanding not only weather on Earth, but also the concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere.
What are elves and blue rays?
But what are lightning and blue elves? Blue rays, as their name suggests, are streams of blue lightning that do not point to the ground, but shoot upwards into space. As the pictures show, they are pretty beautiful to look at.
Elves, on the other hand, are light emissions that appear as rapidly expanding rings in the ionosphere.
Both elves and blue jets were detected by ASIM on February 26, 2019 near Nauru, a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They have now been described in an article published in Nature on January 20, 2021. The studio describes these events in great detail capturing their stunning beauty even without using images.
It’s definitely worth reading if you’re a fan of space phenomena. It is also indicative of all that we have yet to discover on our beautiful planet.
“This article is a highlight of the many new phenomena that ASIM is observing over storms and shows that we still have much to discover and learn about our Universe,” said in a statement Astrid Orr, coordinator of physical sciences at ‘ESA for human and robotic spaceflight. .