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White to move and mate in two #695 - Red Sprites [1]
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Date: 2025-07-22
This is a spectacular image of a Sprite taken by astronaut Nichole “Vapor” Ayers from the ISS on July 3.
Ayers wrote in a tweet —
Just. Wow. As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite. Sprites are TLEs or Transient Luminous Events, that happen above the clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below. We have a great view above the clouds, so scientists can use these types of pictures to better understand the formation, characteristics, and relationship of TLEs to thunderstorms.
Sprites occur near the top of the mesosphere at about 80 km altitude in response to the electric field generated by lightning flashes in underlying thunderstorms. When a sufficiently large positive lightning strike carries charges to the ground, the cloud top is left with a strongly negative net charge. In the low pressure of the upper mesosphere the breakdown voltage is drastically reduced, allowing for an electron avalanche to occur. Sprites get their characteristic red color from excitation of nitrogen.
SPRITE is a backronym for Stratospheric Perturbations Resulting from Intense Thunderstorm Electrification.
Other related phenomenon, collectively know as Transient Luminous Events, are named Elves, Blue Jets, Gigantic jets, Trolls, Pixies, Ghosts and Gnomes 😄 en.wikipedia.org/...
Sprites are elusive (hence the name), last for a few milliseconds and can also be seen from the ground under ideal viewing conditions. Here is one near the southeast Aegean Sea, captured from the eastern suburbs of Athens, Greece on December 4, 2021 by Thanasis Papathanasiou.
Now let’s solve today’s puzzle composed in 1938 by noted Hungarian chess player and composer József Szöghy (1910-1993).
P.S.
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