Chasing Sprites in Electric Skies

Narration:

Transcript:

Sprites, I saw them on a documentary once and I kind of became fascinated with them. I've been trying to capture them for a while. So it's kind of all snowballed into a semi-obsession.

Woah! Ha ha ha!

[Paul] Woah! I saw that one too.

[Paul’s son] I saw that one!

[Paul] You saw that red one? Yeah! Ha ha! I can’t wait to look at that one again.

My name’s Paul Smith and I'm a sprite chaser, which means I like to photograph the night sky and sprites in particular. They look like to the naked eye you would probably see them as flashes above thunderstorms. And then the camera picks up more of the colors — nice red, orange, sometimes purple colors. 

I would say the region of space above the thunderstorms is almost like an electrical zoo. We have these collection of electrical activity we have blue jets, gigantic jets, trolls, halos. It's almost like an electric fairy tale. Sprites is just one of many. Collectively, these transient luminous events.

Sprites are like snowflakes. They come in various shapes and sizes so we call them angel sprites, carrot sprites, column sprites.

They're just beautiful to look at and just the fact that no sprite is identical to the other is good enough reason to study them and look at them all day long. You're never gonna get bored.

So sprites are very large scale events. Their width is usually up to five to 10 kilometers and their vertical extent is about 40 or 50 kilometers. You can almost fit a small town in there.

Because these sprites are very large scale events, they change the atmospheric composition and we don’t know the extent of this effect. So it's important to study them in the long run.

It's just a real cool thing to be able to shoot and see these things that nobody else is really getting on a regular basis.

I saw their phenomenal images and I wanted to work with them and leverage their images and data collection.

And it sparked this idea in my head what if I created a citizen science project that I can connect the public with the scientific community so we can further our understanding together.

With this new citizen science project our goal is to create the first ever comprehensive database of sprites. I’m very excited about this. I know there are a lot of people out there who are naturally chasing sprites, so I'm asking all sprite chasers to submit their images to us. It’s like a puzzle — they provide one piece, we provide the other and we solve it together.

With this citizen science project, I'm just really excited to think that finally we'll have a connection because I've been getting these sprites for so long and I got a bunch sitting on my hard drive that nobody's really dissected or looked at. So I think this will be a good bridge for that.

So there’s a chance for storms so — and sprites — so let’s get to it.

I've been studying sprites for 15 years and I have not seen them in person and I am super excited about the opportunity to go chasing with Paul. I haven’t met him before and I’m going to be meeting him soon so we’re going to go capture some sprites. 

[Burcu] Hi Paul, it’s so nice to meet you!

[Paul] You too. I’m doing great. Awesome.

[Burcu] Let’s have a fist bump. So, what’s our plan today? Where are we heading?

[Paul] Well we’ve got some storms in over in Akasansas and Mississippi that will be in range if we head down to southeast Oklahoma.

[Burcu] Okay, let’s go sprite chasing!

[Paul] Let’s go!

So the best places to catch sprites are where you've got big lightning strikes.

We’re heading to a lake in a dark sky area of southeast Oklahoma. 

So when you look at the radar, we are mostly looking for those regions that have red cells and the system was evolving to be able to form some powerful flashes, which we need for the sprites tonight. So, it’s looking good.

[Burcu] Hey Paul, so what other tips you have for sprite chasing?

[Paul] I always try to look for really dark skies. Maybe at first look on Google Maps and just see... find areas without any development nearby.

[GPS: In a quarter mile, keep left on the fork. Follow signs for Daisy]

[Burcu] Okay, yeah. It looks pretty open here.

[Paul] Yeah, that’s the direction we’re looking. Perfect.

Where the storm was on the map, I just lined us up on Google Earth to like a landmark. I can see the point, this point of the bridge here. 

So yeah, we are right now here in Oklahoma, but the storm we’re looking at is over in Mississippi, Alabama state border and that’s pretty far out. We’re talking about 375 miles. It’s pretty far out. 

When I look at the screen, I’m pretty much scanning the horizon here because the storms are pretty far out and I will be able to just see the lightning flash the top of the cloud tops, pretty much that light. 


That’s my clue to trigger and that’s when I press the button and I don’t see the sprite until I actually replay that little capture.

And I’m hoping that I actually captured something.

[Paul] I’m kind of thinking because if you don’t... if I don’t see something in…


[Paul] Oh.. there was a sprite!

[Burcu] Seriously? And then the moment I just turn my head! Seriously!


[Paul] There’s a sprite guys! 


[Burcu] Let’s see.

[Paul] I hope I caught it on time.

[Burcu] Oh my gosh.

[Burcu] Yes! We have one! Oh my god, that’s awesome! And that was actually pretty close.

[Paul] Pretty close!

[Burcu] High fives! We did it.

[Burcu] Oh. Perfect. I think we got one. Awesome.

[Burcu] And I think that was a column sprite.

[Burcu] It’s right there. We actually captured sprites!

I keep replaying this. This is amazing!

Yeah, that’s why... now I understand why you don’t want to leave once you have one capture. 

This is all what science is about. It’s just this excitement and trying to understand how they’re formed and what makes them look the way they are. It’s just amazing and a highlight of my career. 

This citizen science project, I think that's it's going to be our best bet for figuring out actually what's going on with these sprites. And that's exciting to think that might happen in my lifetime and if it doesn’t, I’d be pretty disappointed.