Atmospheric homes of elves and sprites revealed

I have observed a far storm with a telescope from ground, but i have managed to see only "normal" lights, neither sprites, nor elves. are you sure that these phenomena happen all around the world, and they are not coonfined within definite latitudes?

They are hard to spot with the naked eye or even with a high powered telescope, especially since they appear for about 1/10 of a second. The images you saw are usually captured with a expensive equipment designed to capture these lights with very sensitive lenses capturing images at hundreds or even thousands of frames per second. Usually the initial flash of lightning will over expose your eye causing you to miss that sprite, or whatever they want to call them.

Don't blink the Elves could escape... literally

So elves do exist!!!! :D

i knew it. i love em

Because lightning is a different phenomenon.  There was a big dispute among scientists in the early years of this research. There were some who wanted to call it lightning, but they tended not to be lightning researchers and didn't know the subject very well. The real lightning research community prevailed, and a whimsical set of names (sprites, etc.) was chosen so as not to confuse them with real lightning.

The theorists have been very busy during the last ten years. Now they know exactly what they are, what causes them, and the underlying physics.

neat

Really?
I just saw a NGeo one and it said 200 miles wide 40 miles tall

Well, I saw a PBS one where they said it was 500 miles wide and 80 miles tall.
(This is not true)