THE NIGHT SKY IN TIBET WAS ILLUMINATED BY RARE RED SPRITES THAT RESEMBLED JELLYFISH-SHAPED FIREWORKS
Red sprites are as beautiful as they are elusive. These massive lights take place above thunderstorm clouds, high in the sky. They are therefore almost impossible to perceive from the ground with the unaided eye. Nonetheless, skilled astrophotographers have dedicated enough time to studying this phenomenon to be in the correct location at the right moment to picture them. Dong Shuchang is one such photographer who recently caught a red sprite over Tibet.
Red sprites are hurled upward toward the atmosphere rather than downward toward Earth, as is the case with ordinary lightning. Nitrogen reacts with electrical discharges above to produce its distinctive colour. From May 31 to June 1, this specific red sprite was visible.
Shuchang ascended to a viewpoint on the Tibetan plateau at 16,404 feet, since these lights appear at elevations of 25 to 50 miles. These red, jellyfish-shaped "fireworks" are seen illuminating the night sky in the Xizang (Tibet) Autonomous Region, close to the Shannan City region in southwest China, in this 120 frames per second video.
“I checked the weather forecast for May 31 and the early hours of June 1 in advance,” Shuchang said in an interview with China Central Television (CCTV). “After analysing the satellite imagery, I was confident that the weather would not interfere with the shoot, so I made my way to the mountains of Shannan to find a clear vantage point.”
The public was not blind to the scene's attractiveness. With 1.7 million views on Weibo, one of the largest social media sites in China, the red sprite video has gone viral. According to Shuchang's explanation in the video caption, "Sprite lightning is formed in the middle layer of the atmosphere and is the outcome of electromagnetic waves generated by lightning strikes." "It is elusive, hard to shoot, and only exists in the air for a very short period."
His footage has even aided scientists in learning more about this unique weather phenomenon. “By analysing the parent lightning discharges, we discovered that the sprites were triggered by high-peak current positive cloud-to-ground lightning strikes within a massive mesoscale convective system,” says Professor Gaopeng Lu, who used Shuchang's footage from previous red sprites shot in 2022 to study these flashes. “This suggests that thunderstorms in the Himalayan region have the potential to produce some of the most complex and intense upper-atmospheric electrical discharges on Earth.”
The astrophotographer, who is only 27 years old, has a special talent for observing and recording cosmic phenomena, including red sprites. In 2021, his photograph of an annular solar eclipse earned him the title of Astronomy Photographer of the Year. Shuchang has also captured the Milky Way and comets across a wide range of landscapes. He claims, "I'm constantly on the lookout for the next phenomenon."