https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tGPQ5kzJ9Tg

I found this very interesting when they were first spotted. This is a short factual introduction to them. Apologies for any advertising.

Edited April 6Apr 6 by hamateur 1953
Advertising

Thank you for the video! I also think that TLEs are a very interesting topic, and spectacular.

Recently a gigantic jet has been photographed from the ISS.

Thats a pretty good video hamateur, Transient Luminous Events (TLE) are fascinating phenomenon.

While they were officially discovered in 1989 I'm sure the many pilots (or even airplane passengers) that saw these phenomenon for decades before they were recorded felt vindicated. Reports of these kind of sightings go back decades and were dismissed as hallucinations, fatigue or explained by other causes prior to being photographically confirmed.

Once you know what the right conditions are and where to look (as the video somewhat covers) you have the chance to see them. I had a great opportunity to record a tremendous display in 2019 while in western Oklahoma but I was not familiar with the proper configuration, selection of optics at that time. Using a 14mm lens I did record some small smudges but the lens was too wide a field of view for the distance we were from the storms in Kansas.

The blue jets typically last for a fraction of a second, whilst red sprites only last for a few milliseconds.

Here's two photos taken from space of red sprites:

I had to send these in a separate message (due to the 200kb max):

An elf (left) and a blue jet (right)

Once again, elves last only for a few milliseconds as well, and most likely appear around a red sprite.

Edited April 6Apr 6 by Zhe Yu

4 hours ago, astroHoward said:

Thats a pretty good video hamateur, Transient Luminous Events (TLE) are fascinating phenomenon.

While they were officially discovered in 1989 I'm sure the many pilots (or even airplane passengers) that saw these phenomenon for decades before they were recorded felt vindicated. Reports of these kind of sightings go back decades and were dismissed as hallucinations, fatigue or explained by other causes prior to being photographically confirmed.

Once you know what the right conditions are and where to look (as the video somewhat covers) you have the chance to see them. I had a great opportunity to record a tremendous display in 2019 while in western Oklahoma but I was not familiar with the proper configuration, selection of optics at that time. Using a 14mm lens I did record some small smudges but the lens was too wide a field of view for the distance we were from the storms in Kansas.

I definitely agree @astroHoward that they were likely seen many times in the past by airline pilots, passengers and others. I am hoping someone sometime catches the traveling pulses in Auroral displays that I have heard about but never seen. We sure have a lot more people interested in photography these days!

Bump. 😊

I've been hunting for these for about a year now. What I've realised is that you need to be very lucky in terms of time of day, distance to the storm system(plus angle if terrain isn't flat) and the cameras shutter lining up with the creation of the phenomenon. I've managed to produce only a partial blur of a blue jet so far filming at 100fps with a Z6 during bright conditions.

The thunderstorm season is about to start again and I have hopes of being able to capture one this year 😉

@hamateur 1953 I must have missed this thread when you first posted it.

And yes like @Rudolph and @astroHoward said (and like was obvious in that video) - the distance and angle to the storm cloud have to be jut right to capture them.

So my question to you guys who have already been shooting them -

are you shooting video, or time lapses? Clearly you don't want to miss time between the shots or you'll miss the TLEs altogether?

Also, you want to shoot "wide enough", but if you go too wide then it'll be hard to find the TLEs in the image, as it will be tiny, right?

Always wanted to get a picture of these. Best shot of getting them is near a MCS and trailing stratiform region of a thunderstorm complex, sometimes when you get a large anvil crawler along and under the stratiform region, that’s the trigger

25 minutes ago, NightSky said:

So my question to you guys who have already been shooting them -

are you shooting video, or time lapses? Clearly you don't want to miss time between the shots or you'll miss the TLEs altogether?

Also, you want to shoot "wide enough", but if you go too wide then it'll be hard to find the TLEs in the image, as it will be tiny, right?

I had been shooting night sky time lapses when I caught them. A DSLR with intervalometer set to zero time between frames does work but could miss an event. Yes they were tiny in my case, a APC sensor and 14mm lens. There is a relationship with the distance to the storm source, size of sensor on camera and lens focal length. Best I can tell you are going to get good results with 50 - 100mm FL lenses on a DSLR if at the right distance.

As Jay just mentioned being in the right relative location is the key factor. If MCS ( Mesoscale Convective System) are forming you need to be positioned far enough away to get the cloud tops yet not to close lightning overwhelms the sky darkness. From my experience being to the west side (SW all the way to NNW) of a storm moving in a easterly direction is a good choice. My best opportunity I mishandled came when I was 280 miles west south west of a massive cluster of cells over Medicine Lodge KS. In that case had I switched to a 85 or 100mm lens it would have been ideal to capture the sprites. If your in the Midwest / plains states like me we tend to have a lot of good chances this time of year!

Somewhere I have a link to a good tutorial video, if I find it I will post it.

14 minutes ago, astroHoward said:

I had been shooting night sky time lapses when I caught them. A DSLR with intervalometer set to zero time between frames does work but could miss an event. Yes they were tiny in my case, a APC sensor and 14mm lens. There is a relationship with the distance to the storm source, size of sensor on camera and lens focal length. Best I can tell you are going to get good results with 50 - 100mm FL lenses on a DSLR if at the right distance.

As Jay just mentioned being in the right relative location is the key factor. If MCS ( Mesoscale Convective System) are forming you need to be positioned far enough away to get the cloud tops yet not to close lightning overwhelms the sky darkness. From my experience being to the west side (SW all the way to NNW) of a storm moving in a easterly direction is a good choice. My best opportunity I mishandled came when I was 280 miles west south west of a massive cluster of cells over Medicine Lodge KS. In that case had I switched to a 85 or 100mm lens it would have been ideal to capture the sprites. If your in the Midwest / plains states like me we tend to have a lot of good chances this time of year!

Somewhere I have a link to a good tutorial video, if I find it I will post it.

Very cool! Tnx @astroHoward and @Jay would love to see some of your stuff. 40, 000 ft towers pretty rare in Washington, ain’t enough CAPE either for EF5 tornadoes . Miss chasing those too. Not seeing death and destruction though….. @Landon Moeller. I’m pretty sure he has heard of Pecos Hank but possibly not of his other interests.

Edited May 20May 20 by hamateur 1953
Jay and nander chasin. Tagged another chaser

Someone caught one in Switzerland yesterday -

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Ftn80737yhy1f1.jpeg

You can find the post about it on reddit/r/weather

@astroHoward - yeah, I'd probably be in prime territory for sprites, being in Oklahoma :) All I need is to catch a faraway thunderstorm with good visibility to the top of it, and then have some luck - haha. I don't have any luck, unless it's bad luck, as the saying goes...

Also, living down here kinda makes one a half way weather nerd, so MCS is a familiar acronym.

Medicine Lodge is a familiar place, too, I went trail riding / camping just west of there many many years ago. Great dark skies there. It was the first time I'd ever seen the air filled with fireflies, it was magical! I also remember a great big thunderstorm way out in the distance - certainly in Oklahoma - that I was worried about - LOL! I literally had no experience with big storms back then, and I remember the moonlight lighting up the giant cloud, and the lightnings within - it was amazing! But, alas, that was a very long time ago.

Edited May 20May 20 by NightSky

Hello neighbor down south!

1 hour ago, NightSky said:

Someone caught one in Switzerland yesterday -

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Ftn80737yhy1f1.jpeg

That is a good lucky catch. Looks to have been a really strong sprite. Pity they did not mention camera / lens they used; the EXIF information was not in the jpeg .

Here is one good tutorial for those interested:

Funny he mentions storm chasing being related to this. Fortunately you would want to be further away than that crowd. Given I hear the roads get jammed up with traffic these days with so many storm chasers now.

This was not the video I am looking for but I have seen it before and it covers everything pretty well.

3 minutes ago, astroHoward said:

Hello neighbor down south!

That is a good lucky catch. Looks to have been a really strong sprite. Pity they did not mention camera / lens they used; the EXIF information was not in the jpeg .

Here is one good tutorial for those interested:

Funny he mentions storm chasing being related to this. Fortunately you would want to be further away than that crowd. Given I hear the roads get jammed up with traffic these days with so many storm chasers now.

This was not the video I am looking for but I have seen it before and it covers everything pretty well.

What stopped me from chasing was the movie Twister. Mercy. You could easily predict the outcome after that movie @astroHoward!! Excellent video!!

Edited May 21May 21 by hamateur 1953
👍👍tutorial

2 hours ago, NightSky said:

Someone caught one in Switzerland yesterday -

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Ftn80737yhy1f1.jpeg

I MADE RANDOMLY SOME LONG EXPOSIRR PHOTO AND I CAPTURED THAT I‘M FREAKING OUT

Lucky bastard 😂.

@astroHoward He also has an impressive video of cloud-to-cloud lightning that looks like it was shot at a fairly high fps, so I'm guessing it's a camera on the more expensive side.

PS: The storm was apparently about 300km away

Edited May 20May 20 by Rudolph
Added distance

I've always wanted to persue TLE's as well. I chase storms every summer and have had the opportunity to take some amazing photos (one of them is actually on my profile). About 9 months ago I moved a place on a huge hill that gives me a great vantage point above thunderstorm tops. I live right on the edge of a mountainous area called the Black Hills and to east of me is plains. My idea is to set weather alerts for a town that is a certain distance away from me so I can try to capture TLE's this summer!

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

He also has an impressive video of cloud-to-cloud lightning that looks like it was shot at a fairly high fps

Many phones do 240fps, so not necessarily. My best camera only does 120fps - except GoPro does 240fps, but it's a tiny sensor.

2 hours ago, astroHoward said:

Funny he mentions storm chasing being related to this. Fortunately you would want to be further away than that crowd. Given I hear the roads get jammed up with traffic these days with so many storm chasers now.

Yes, absolutely.

Just stay away from the chasers, they'll run over you. Or, block the road so you can't get away from the storm...

Chasing has recently become a big business on the plains, right? Do you often see vans loaded with tornado-tourists with beers in their cupholders and a bag a chips?

@astroHoward - that youtube video was pretty comprehensive and confirmed pretty much everything I had considered if I wanted to try shooting the TLEs.

I could have had a great chance to try to shoot them last night after the storms moved out of my area off to the south east. There was a pretty long line that was sustaining activity for hours, and it was far enough to be able to see the tops well.

Next time, I guess?

@JessicaF - ha, indeed! The roads are loaded, judging by the footage we see from the storm trackers that out local TV stations use for their info "on location". We live in a rural area, and I only go to [our small] town maybe once a week - if that - so I wouldn't be seeing any of that activity. That said, my husband was east of OKC the other day and he said he saw Reed Timmer headed west in his fortified tornado tracking vehicle... there was a big storm brewing out that way...LOL

If anyone wants to see a cool glimpse into storm chasing - there is a German youtube channel where a group of friends come to the US (I believe over several years) to chase and to document; they have several episodes of that and it's really interesting - especially as you see it from their viewpoint.

I just looked them up and it seems they're chasing, and were live on YT just earlier today? They also have one from yesterday, from Oklahoma - I just don't think I'm going to watch through 11 hours of live footage....LOL

https://www.youtube.com/@RealUnwetterjaeger

Anyway, they have a series of older episodes from maybe a couple of years ago that's pretty interesting.

Also, great footage -- ANDDDD, they have AURORA videos, too!! Like, really nice ones!!

17 hours ago, Rudolph said:

I've been hunting for these for about a year now. What I've realised is that you need to be very lucky in terms of time of day, distance to the storm system(plus angle if terrain isn't flat) and the cameras shutter lining up with the creation of the phenomenon. I've managed to produce only a partial blur of a blue jet so far filming at 100fps with a Z6 during bright conditions.

The thunderstorm season is about to start again and I have hopes of being able to capture one this year 😉

If I'm not mistaken you generally also want to be in the right place of the world; I recall reading that generally the places with the most lightning were also where you'd have the best chance of seeing most TLEs. I even had an exchange with someone on reddit who was from Uganda and said he saw blue jets on the horizon all the time. This is a map showing the density of lightning worldwide, some regions are definitely more "blessed" than others:

6 hours ago, NightSky said:

@astroHoward - that youtube video was pretty comprehensive and confirmed pretty much everything I had considered if I wanted to try shooting the TLEs.

I could have had a great chance to try to shoot them last night after the storms moved out of my area off to the south east. There was a pretty long line that was sustaining activity for hours, and it was far enough to be able to see the tops well.

Next time, I guess?

@JessicaF - ha, indeed! The roads are loaded, judging by the footage we see from the storm trackers that out local TV stations use for their info "on location". We live in a rural area, and I only go to [our small] town maybe once a week - if that - so I wouldn't be seeing any of that activity. That said, my husband was east of OKC the other day and he said he saw Reed Timmer headed west in his fortified tornado tracking vehicle... there was a big storm brewing out that way...LOL

If anyone wants to see a cool glimpse into storm chasing - there is a German youtube channel where a group of friends come to the US (I believe over several years) to chase and to document; they have several episodes of that and it's really interesting - especially as you see it from their viewpoint.

I just looked them up and it seems they're chasing, and were live on YT just earlier today? They also have one from yesterday, from Oklahoma - I just don't think I'm going to watch through 11 hours of live footage....LOL

https://www.youtube.com/@RealUnwetterjaeger

Anyway, they have a series of older episodes from maybe a couple of years ago that's pretty interesting.

Also, great footage -- ANDDDD, they have AURORA videos, too!! Like, really nice ones!!

I pmed @Landon Moeller awhile back and he actually ran into Reed Timmer at a restaurant during a chasing episode. He didn’t say if he was in his “ Dominator ”. I forgot to ask. We texted about the El Reno unfortunate chaser deaths of Tim Samaras and others. Big loss to chaser community. 🙁

Edited May 21May 21 by hamateur 1953
El Reno

3 hours ago, Philalethes said:

If I'm not mistaken you generally also want to be in the right place of the world; I recall reading that generally the places with the most lightning were also where you'd have the best chance of seeing most TLEs. I even had an exchange with someone on reddit who was from Uganda and said he saw blue jets on the horizon all the time. This is a map showing the density of lightning worldwide, some regions are definitely more "blessed" than others:

That's not exactly encouraging, can barely make out some blue around where I live.

@Rudolph - yeah, I saw somewhere yesterday (a video maybe?) where being up north is not the best place, mainly because it's rare to have big lines of thunderstorms at night time. You can have TLEs in isolated thunderstorms, but they're more likely to happen in storms within MCSs, you can have LOTS of them happen in those because of all the energy they create over several hours.

Don't be discouraged, though, you can still try to catch them - just like I try to catch darn Auroras down here in the "almost deep south"...LOL

@hamateur 1953 - that El Reno deal was so bad, it was an absolute monster storm. I remember it well because my son used to be a weather nerd at that time (not enough time for that with a young family now) and he had just arrived here that day from Finland and we were watching the weather closely together. Even our way (close to Tulsa) the weather was kinda scary looking when getting home from the airport, but nothing like it was out farther west. Then the news broke about Tim and his son the next morning.

There are also some very interesting analysis videos on YT about that storm and how everything went down if one happens to be interested.

Oh, and speaking of Reed - he went for a true spin yesterday in Alabama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9AFvmO1u_Q

He's crazy.

Looks like there are going to be some storms NE of me about 120 (and +) miles away tonight... and we should have clear skies..... I'm not on the optimal side of this storm system, but you never know...

Maybe time to try for some sprites?

I need to go out and scout a location, because we have some big trees on the east side of the property that could block my view. Also, NE is my worst light pollution area :(

I bumped into another one, this is older but really cool as they're chasing the sprites from airplanes -

Well I did not attempt to catch the sprites last night. I would have had to get right against the fence in the pasture to be on the other side of the trees with a better view, but in that case the horses would have come to visit me (they "help") no doubt. Didn't want to risk my cameras and things. Also, like I said - the light pollution is really bad to that direction, compared to everywhere else around us. I didn't think I'd be able to see or catch anything through that.

So, I need to wait till storms happen in a better direction.