Sprites dancing above the Andes, and hydroxyl airglow

Unfiltered time lapse imagery looking eastward from Cerro Tololo Observatory, Chile (30.169 S, 70.805 W) in January, 2005. The view is toward the East, and the dark ridge is the spine of the Andes Mountains, with the bright star field of the Southern Sky above. The wave-like undulations are hydroxyl airglow emissions in the mesosphere modulated by mountain waves. The camera used to take the images was a small astronomical camera, Starlight Xpress MX716. The images are 10 sec integrations at approximately 12 sec intervals. The clip is played back at 10 fps, giving a speed up factor of approximately 120 compared to real time. Just above the top of the ridge line, on the right, one observes sprites generated by an unseen thunderstorm on the other side of the Andes, approximately 500 km to the east in Argentina (verified separately using GOES images). It is interesting to note the clarity of the atmosphere and the complete absence of haze - stars suddenly pop into view on the horizon. (Music: Excerpt from "Simple Gifts" by Elder Joseph, made popular in Aaron Copeland's "Appalachian Spring.")

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  Science & Technology

[auto9898]

Is this a IR image or just black and white?

[Eastview605]

These are unfiltered monochrome images, where nothing special has been done. The Sony CCD in the imager has an extended near-IR response that extends out to about 1 micron, which is why the NIR airglow shows up so well. Standard SLR digital cameras usually have an IR blocking filter that takes out everything longward of about 650 nm, which means it would probably be difficult to record the airglow using standard color cameras.

[julianzolo]

awesome. I wonder what effect those things have in the atmosphere

[Imnotlisteninglalala]

That was beautiful. Thank you =)