Interesting light effect in the sky... What is causing it?

Hey!

Browsing youtube again before bed, I came upon this video below that shows a really cool and interesting (to me at least) phenomena.

What is causing this?

Please feel free to watch the whole video if you want, but the phenomena I'm interested in is basically only in the first 4 minutes or so of the video.

Are these some sort of plasma tubes caused by the charged tops of darker possibly storm causing clouds?

I've seen lots of storm clouds, but never phenomena like this!

It looks, to me at least, like a filament from plasma ball!

Enjoy! Really interested in hearing comments about what you think this might be?

I have seen some really weird things dealing with weather and clouds but that is right up there in the weird department for me..

a reply to: gspat

That's worth a flag! But I cannot give you a star because your avatar REALLY creeps me out.

In before "swamp gas"....

That is wild OP!! I've never seen anything like it either.

There have been a few of these captured over the last few years.

This one seems like it less likely to be faked to me.

I wonder if this will be like sprints and jets in the sense that it will be recognized as a real phenomena eventually.

I read that that explanation was that the electric fields above the cloud were rapidly changing as the electric charge from the storm was being redistributed. This had the effect of reorienting the hexagonal ice crystals, so that light would be reflected in different directions.

It's given as ice crystals electrostatically charged then lining up, then collapsing, then lining up , then......anyway it's called a Crown Flash.

Explanation here from Angela Fritz an atmospheric scientist,


www.washingtonpost.com...

It seems also that nature did a small piece on the phenomena back in the 1970's, and it was given the name Crown Flash then. I'm not sure that the actual nature of the phenomena was known then.

www.nature.com...

a reply to: gspat

I recently saw a youtube video explaining that this has to do with the polarisation of ice crystals, if I'm not mistaken. This phenomenon reminds of those huge flocks of birds suddenly changing direction all at once, but there is a slight delay.

soulwaxer

I saw this on Space Weather today.

: "A blue starter is an electric streamer discharge coming out of the top of a thundercloud, fanning out and reaching up to the stratosphere as high as 26 km altitude. First reported by UAF scientists Wescott and Sentman in 1995/1996, they were found to be different from blue jets, which reach 35-40 km height."

"Since then, there have been very few reports of blue starters," continues van der Velde. "It seems that unusual physical circumstances may be required to produce them. Also, geometry can prevent people from seeing blue starters when a cloud is nearby because the underbody of the cloud can block their view. At larger distances the blue/violet light does not make it to the observer due to scattering."

Update: Since the posting of this story, several readers have come forward with "blue starter" sightings of their own. The phenomenon has appeared over the Balkans (Ulrich Beinert), over Virginia (Joseph M. Zawodny), and over Quebec (Gabriel Cyr). Maybe they are not so rare, after all!

Blue starters and blue jets are cousins of sprites, another form of exotic lightning that shoots up instead of down. Sprites, however, are more frequently observed. Check them out in the realtime photo gallery:

a reply to: whatnext21

Cool. Thanx.

Still very cool.

Thank u op.

You're all wrong. What you are witnessing is a battle in the heavens between light entities. Specific atmospheric conditions which simulate the infrared spectrum unveil these etheric beings. The squiggly light worm form is actually a spiritual parasite that was being extracted and consumed by a higher frequency rival. If you look closesly at the clouds in the three dimensional (opposed to the two dimensional), you may be able to decipher it's true shape. The truth is stranger than fiction.

(Quotes from this website's article below)
(forgetomori.com...)

"Rather than distortions of droplets, perhaps these are "sundogs" or parhelia light patterns caused by aligned ice crystals. A changing e-field could rotate all the ice plates or needles, causing the sundog to suddenly change shape and position. Or less likely, perhaps some condensing droplets are changing size under e-field influence (growth/shrinkage of small droplets is known to be altered by strong electrostatic fields.)"

"We do know that ice crystals can populate thunderheads. And if Beaty’s “strange idea” is that they could align themselves under the influence of changing electrical fields, as he notes, this has been observed in laboratory conditions (Foster, Hallet, 2002, 2008). And it has also been observed in situ, due to thunderstorms, with meteorological radars (Caylor, Chandrasekar, 1996). The big news here would be that these phenomena would combine to produce these light shows we may be seeing in these different videos, with several witnesses from different locations in Maryland, USA and Malaysia.

Pic of "Sundog" could be a "leaping/jumping Sundog"


(Quote below from Wikipedia)
(en.wikipedia.org...)
"Sun dogs are commonly caused by the refraction of light from plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals either in high and cold cirrus or cirrostratus clouds or, during very cold weather, drifting in the air at low levels, in which case they are called diamond dust.[4] The crystals act as prisms, bending the light rays passing through them with a minimum deflection of 22°. As the crystals gently float downwards with their large hexagonal faces almost horizontal, sunlight is refracted horizontally, and sun dogs are seen to the left and right of the Sun. Larger plates wobble more, and thus produce taller sundogs."

This picture is a good description of the atmospheric optical phemonena, of why the "sundog" (or light) moves around as if its jumping/leaping/dancing in the clouds


if the description image of the leaping sundog phenomena is too small to read, here is the view image link from google (i.dailymail.co.uk... 9917.jpg)

even better, here is the website article the image is found on (www.dailymail.co.uk...)

The phenomenon is known as a crown flash. I did a thread on this earlier and was left disappointed. Nature on the other hand, never ceases to amaze.

Crown flash is a rare but observed phenomenon involving "The brightening of a thunderhead crown followed by the appearance of aurora-like streamers emanating into the clear atmosphere". The current hypothesis is that sunlight is reflecting off or refracting through tiny ice crystals above the crown of a cumulonimbus cloud. These ice crystals are aligned by the strong electro-magnetic effects around the cloud, so the effect may appear as a tall streamer or pillar of light. When the electro-magnetic field is disturbed by lightning flashes within the cloud, the ice crystals are re-orientated causing the light pattern to shift very rapidly and appear to 'dance' in a strikingly mechanical fashion. The effect may also sometimes known as a "leaping sundog". As with sundogs, the observer would have to be in a specific position to see the effect, which is not a self-generated light such as seen in a lightning strike, but rather a changing reflection/refraction of the sunlight.

originally posted by: stormcell
I read that that explanation was that the electric fields above the cloud were rapidly changing as the electric charge from the storm was being redistributed. This had the effect of reorienting the hexagonal ice crystals, so that light would be reflected in different directions.

That is the pretty much it. Seems like we were posting around the same time

This isn't a natural occurrence. It appears to be controlled by something like if you were adjusting a lens. Never seen anything like it before this video.

It looks incredible! Nice post!

If it's ice crystals, Them some big ol ice crystals...

originally posted by: NewzNose
a reply to: gspat

That's worth a flag! But I cannot give you a star because your avatar REALLY creeps me out.

I was about to type how I totally dig the avatar.

Crown Flash/Leaping Sundog eh?

It's a pity I've never seen one up close and personal!

I wonder what the charge has to be at the cloud top for this to happen?

Is this something that bleeds off the charge so sprites don't happen?

It must be one heck of charge/current/field up there to move around ice crystals.

Sorry to be that person but someone's already posted this
www.abovetopsecret.com...