This picture shows the breathtaking beauty of a special sky acting over the Himalaya. Scientists call the atmospheric weather phenomenon “Elfen fireworks” or “Red Kobolde”. The bright red flashes occur in thunderstorms with extreme electrical discharges. They arise from strong, mostly positively charged flashes that cease rain clouds from the upper atmosphere to earth in areas with stratiforms, as analyzes of the “Red Sprites” recently showed.
The photo is entitled “Cosmic Fireworks” and in 2023 won the “Himmelslandschafts” category in the “Astronomy Photographer of the Year” competition of the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London. Two Chinese hobby photographers recorded it in the night of May 19, 2022 near the Pumoyongcuo lake in Tibet’s highlands. At that time there was an extreme weather that extended over 200,000 square kilometers from ganges to the Himalayas.
In addition to the flashing visible in this picture, a total of 105 “red goblins” occurred that night – the highest known number during a single thunderstorm in South Asia. Around half of these events were “dancing goblins”. In addition, 16 unusual secondary jets appeared and four extremely rare green luminous emissions, which are called “spirits”. It is a greenish post -light at the top of the “Red Sprites”.
“This indicates that thunderstorms in the Himalayan area can create some of the most complex and intensive electrical discharges in the upper atmosphere of the earth,” says Gaopeng LU from the Chinese University of Science and Technology. Similar strong areas of tension, but less complex discharges, there are, for example, in the Great Plains of the USA and off the coast of Europe.