A rare "red elf" phenomenon appears in the sky in Guiyang. What is the red luminous object?

Looking at the photo, you might think that this is a scene from a science fiction movie, but in fact it is not a strange scene captured by a photographer on the Yunding Grassland on the high slopes of Huaxi, Guizhou. Today, let’s talk about how this kind of thing is formed, and why is it like this?

The red elf is a high-altitude atmospheric discharge phenomenon caused by thunderstorms, which usually occurs when the thunderstorm cloud top breaks away. The ground is about thirty to ninety kilometers in altitude. If there is no intuitive phenomenon about this distance, you will know by comparing the flying altitude of ordinary civil aviation airliners. The flying altitude of ordinary civil aviation airliners is 10 kilometers. And this is 30 to 90 kilometers, even reaching the edge of the earth's space. The upper half of the red elf is red, and the bottom gradually turns blue. It is about five to ten kilometers wide and lasts about ten to one hundred milliseconds, fleeting like lightning. Because these luminous objects are red in color and appear in the air for less than one-thirtieth of a second, making them as elusive as ghosts, scientists call them "Sprites."

Although it is a discharge phenomenon, don’t think it is lightning. This is a cold plasma, more like the discharge phenomenon of fluorescent lamps. Because the discharge time of lightning is very short, the time of red elf lightning is also very short. And because it usually appears above the thunder clouds and only appears at night, it is not easy to be seen by people. People who don’t know it at first glance When I saw this phenomenon, I thought I saw a red ghost, so this kind of lightning was named "red ghost" or "red elf", but some people also called it "red jellyfish" lightning based on its shape. .

In the animated movie "Weathering With You", when the male protagonist went to pick up the female protagonist from the sky, a red elf also appeared in the high-altitude background. All in all, this mysterious natural phenomenon is very wonderful and spectacular, and because its discharge time is very short, it can be said that it adds a bit of mystery to this phenomenon.