The ‘blue jets’ either blue rays They have amazed man since he found the technology to fly high. From above, the perspective of the celestial dome is completely different, it is like admiring from the outside a gigantic bubble with its own life and dynamics that surprise anyone, among them are the so-called ‘blue jets’, which are jets of energy that travel and splash towards the outermost layers of the Earth’s atmosphere.
What are blue rays or ‘blue jets’?
It is composed of various layers through which there are varied arrangements of gas molecules that interact with different temperatures and wind currents. The result is a surprising dynamic inhabited by different types of lightning; We have those that display their power during electrical storms, other types of have also been described, but among these, Blue jets are the most impetuous due to their dripping blue energy.
Whether from an airplane or far beyond, they rise from storm clouds into the stratosphere. These blue rays show their power in less than a second in which they are capable of traveling more than 50 kilometers and no, these are not conventional rays that we can admire from the Earth’s surface.
Unlike conventional rays that usually excite a mixture of gases in the lower one, which is what provides its electric white color, the blue jets or blue rays, mainly excite stratospheric nitrogen Thanks to which, they obtain their characteristic bluish flash that can be observed from an airplane.
Blue rays from the ISS
One of the most extraordinary images of blue jets was taken aboard the International Space Station during 2019, the first high-sharp photograph of a blue jet. At that time, the ISS’s cameras and light-detection instruments called photometers were able to capture a jet of blue light in the middle of a over the Pacific Oceanvery close to Nauru Island.
The bluish explosion of energy was a flash of just 10 microseconds that shot from the top of the cloud about 16 kilometers high and extended to the stratosphere, reaching an average height of 52 kilometers.
Physicists believe that the spark that generated the blue ray may have been a special type of short range electric shock inside the storm cloud. Conventional lightning is usually formed by discharges between regions of opposite charges or clouds and the ground, that is, many kilometers away. Instead, it is believed that the spark that generated the blue jet in the photograph came from regions with opposite charges less than a kilometer away from each other, generating a very short but impetuous burst of electric current as can be seen in the image. .
References: Neubert, T., Chanrion, O., Heumesser, M. et al. Observation of the onset of a blue jet into the stratosphere. Nature 589, 371–375 (2021).