As of: March 9, 2024, 7:36 p.m
By: Sandra Sporer
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Is it a UFO?
A comet?
No.
The glow, which a pilot filmed during a night flight, is a so-called "blue jet," a rare weather phenomenon.
© Screenshot/Instagram
During a night flight, a pilot films how a flash of blue light suddenly shoots into the sky.
The weather phenomenon is also of great interest to researchers.
Munich – Some weather phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña are widely known.
Others, however, are hardly known to anyone outside of research - such as the short-lived mammatus clouds.
A pilot happened to film such a natural spectacle during a night flight.
He probably just wanted to film the impressive storm front passing by when he saw a rare sight.
He witnessed a so-called “Blue Jet”.
The existence of this actively researched natural phenomenon has not been known for long and its origins are not yet fully understood.
Rare sight: Pilot filming a night flight and witnesses a “blue jet” phenomenon
In the pilot's video, a dark thunderstorm night sky is visible, which is repeatedly illuminated by lightning.
Suddenly a blue column of light shoots straight up from the clouds.
The pilot describes the experience on Instagram: “I captured the surreal beauty of a gigantic jet phenomenon during my night flight.
A sight that looks like it came straight from a science fiction film.”
In a comment under the post, a meteorologist explains the sky glow in more detail: “Super cool!
This is called a 'Blue Jet'.
They occur in the stratosphere.” She adds that similar weather phenomena such as “elves” and “sprites” form in the mesosphere.
The online encyclopedia
brittanica.com
describes the natural phenomenon as “flashes of light that occur above thunderstorms and are associated with normal lightning in the thundercloud below.”
However, how these arise is unclear.
The “Blue Jet” weather phenomenon poses a mystery to research – its origins are still unclear
However, this is exactly what is being actively researched and, thanks to the recordings from the ISS, there have already been some new findings in this regard.
In 2018, ISS instruments documented a blue jet and several previous “blue bangs”.
The results were presented by ESA scientists
in an article in the scientific magazine
Nature in 2021.
Together with NASA, ESA recently made a groundbreaking discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope.
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Torsten Neubert, lead author of the study, speculated at
sciencenews.org
: “The spark that produced the blue jet could have been a special type of short-term electrical discharge within the storm cloud.”
So the Blue Jets arise from the Blue Bangs.
However, what triggers this is also unclear.
Mysterious natural spectacles are extremely rare – and can hardly be observed from Earth
Research is made more difficult by the fact that blue jets only occur very rarely.
Documentation is also difficult.
The phenomenon is almost never observed from the Earth's surface because, according to a report by
Nerdist,
blue jets form at an altitude of 80,000 feet (24,384 meters) above sea level.
How extraordinary the video is is also shown by the experience report from a retired pilot, which can be found in the comments under the video: “In 50 years, in which I have flown everything from army helicopters to heavy Boeing 777-300ERs, I have only had one Sprite seen.”
Video of the “Blue Jet” is causing excitement online
Some users also offer humorous alternative explanations for the flash of blue light, including numerous references to Marvel films.
One comment reads: "That was Captain Marvel on his way to Earth." Another jokes: "Yup!
Thor is definitely on his way.”
A much more unpleasant video shows a plane bursting into flames shortly after takeoff.
A holiday plane had to abort its takeoff and make an emergency stop at over 250 km/h.
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