Blue flashes in he sky

Great,
I wasn't imagining it.
It did have a static electricity look about it and it did seem to cover the entire sky, but I was never able to pin down a source location, it was so fast.
One time I was looking down and it illuminated the surroundings for a very brief instant, very strange.

If it is an electrical pulse/discharge, how can you get this on a perfectly clear sky ??

dave, the Max Planck Society should definitely have something on this phenomenon... Search "cosmic blue flashes"
www.mpg.de/english

Johnno

dave, the Max Planck Society should definitely have something on this phenomenon... Search "cosmic blue flashes"
www.mpg.de/english

Johnno

What I get for cosmic Blue Flashes is an article On Cernchof Radiation. There was a research team in Maynooth working on this and I asked them at the time if you could see those flashes with the naked eye and they said they really didn't think so.

The light definitely has a static electricity sort of look to it and to me it always seemed to be an all sky thing rather than something coming from a point.

What I get for cosmic Blue Flashes is an article On Cernchof Radiation. There was a research team in Maynooth working on this and I asked them at the time if you could see those flashes with the naked eye and they said they really didn't think so.

Cherenkov radiation is visible in solar neutrino detectors, where there is no other light. I touched on this in the solar neutrino articles in Arcturus last year for anyone who is interested... But basically the gammay ray or neutrino is travelling faster than light would in the atmosphere[1], this interacts with electrons which in turn get kicked off faster than light in the atmosphere and a photon is emitted etc. etc. You end up with a cone of light in the direction of the original particle.

Its possible that a very high energy cosmic ray passing through the atmosphere could produce something visible to the naked eye via Cherenkov radiation. Though it would need to be very dark. I cant imagine that it would be something you would just happen to notice in passing.

Cheers,
~Al

[1] Travelling fater than light in a given medium is allowed in physics, travelling faster than light _in a vacum_ is not.

Hi Dave

That was a very interesting set of observations. I was about to reply in the negative regarding any sighings of my own untill i heard the description ' like static electricity'. Then i realised immediately that i have had several experiences like this over the last couple of years while observing for long hours during the night. I have only seen this under surperb crystal clear dark skies. I too thought i was witnessing some kind of electrical phenomenon, it looked like a faint neon blue colour like the ion tails of comets, it shimmered violently and was visible over the entire sky. At the time i put it down to observing too much, my eyes dark adaption and sensitivity had reached a whole new level and i put it down to eye strain or something. However i have no idea what this could be!

Very interesting indeed!!!!

Lads,
The way I see it, these are the possible causes.

Is this some sort of electrical upper atmosphere disturbance, when it occurs it spans the entire sky.

Is there something entering the atmosphere that is causing this, maybe some sort atomic particle, I'm not a physicist so this might be completely off the wall.

Is there an atomic particle that when it hits your eye/optic nerve, it causes partial brightness and you see this effect ????

I really dont think its a meteor of some sort, maybe unless it was very fast and heading straight at you so you don't see a tail ??

All these sound unfeasible, but I can't think of anything else .......