File:A bright canvas (potw2234a).jpg
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Summary
[edit]DescriptionA bright canvas (potw2234a).jpg |
English: Thispicture of the week, taken from ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, shows bright red streaks known as red sprites. These are an elusive form of lightning that occurs well-above storm clouds, discharging electricity high up in Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of 50-90km. In addition to occurring much higher in the sky than regular lightning, they are cooler than the white lightning we usually see and appear much fainter. Red sprites are very difficult to catch: the first photographic evidence for them was only taken in 1989. Seemingly painted across the background of the photograph is a green hue, known as airglow. During the day, sunlight knocks electrons away from nitrogen and oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere and, at night, these electrons recombine with the atoms and molecules, causing them to shine. Usually, airglow can only be seen in very dark skies where there is no light pollution. This photograph was taken at the platform of ESO’s 3.6m telescope at La Silla in the middle of Chile’s Atacama desert. Because of its high altitude and lack of light pollution, La Silla is perfect for capturing these unusual phenomena. |
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Date | 22 August 2022 (upload date) | ||
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Author | Zdenek Bardon/ESO | ||
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Licensing
[edit]This media was created by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Their website states: "Unless specifically noted, the images, videos, and music distributed on the public ESO website, along with the texts of press releases, announcements, pictures of the week, blog posts and captions, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible." To the uploader: You must provide a link (URL) to the original file and the authorship information if available. | |
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
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Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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current | 11:00, 1 July 2023 | 5,000 × 3,558 (3.54 MB) | OptimusPrimeBot (talk | contribs) | #Spacemedia - Upload of https://cdn.eso.org/images/large/potw2234a.jpg via Commons:Spacemedia |
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Metadata
This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.
Credit/Provider | Zdenek Bardon/ESO |
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Source | European Southern Observatory |
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Software used | Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 9.1 (Macintosh) |
File change date and time | 13:03, 19 November 2020 |
Lens used | Zeiss Otus 1.4/28 ZF.2 |
Serial number of camera | 6000431 |
Date and time of digitizing | 01:44, 25 November 2019 |
Date metadata was last modified | 14:03, 19 November 2020 |
Unique ID of original document | 78A2F88103F4CF6EA7CC09C95C92E77D |
Contact information |
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2 Garching bei München, None, D-85748 Germany |
IIM version | 4 |