First SPRITE recorded from Ireland?

I was at Armagh Observatory yesterday and was shown a recent recording of a sprite using the meteor station cameras on site.
The sprite was recorded on the 24th July. It was seen in 4 frames based on 25Hz video rate. It was quite distinguishable, clearly showing the typical carrot shape with tails above it. I've never seen one taken from Ireland and may be this is the first. Apostolis Christou did say to me that this was the first one he ever recorded in the 8 years of monitoring meteors. I was amazed that such an event was possible using ground based cameras because they show up not only at the edge of space, but have been recorded in outer space around the Earth.. Apparently they were only discovered for the first time back in 1989. Apostolis showed me a comparison one that had all the characteristics of the one he recorded. I wonder if any other meteor cameras in Ireland picked it up?

Eamonn

Hi Eamonn,

I captured one back in October 2011 ' grahamroche.ie/ '

Unfortunately the camera is currently off line so nothing for this event am afraid..

Regards,

Graham

Was reading about this today, I was unaware that photographing the phenomena was feasible.

I picked up a new PSU for my Canon DSLR. I was aiming to set it up to do some low-iso, long exposures during the storm but by the time I'd organised a relatively sheltered spot to shoot from the lightning had stopped!

Oh well, hopefully next time.

BAA e-bulletin 754: RARE SPRITES CAPTURED ON VIDEO
I’ve had to summarize the bulletin as it was much longer.

On Tuesday 23rd July 2013, cameras of the NEMETODE meteor detection network
operated by members of the BAA Meteor Section captured a number of sprites,
elusive phenomena associated with lightning events that are very rarely
observed within the UK. This is a first for NEMETODE, a network of video
cameras designed to determine the orbits of meteoroids.

The first event was captured from Ravensmoor, Cheshire at 02:06:16 GMT,
early on 23rd July, using a Watec 902H camera with a Computar 8mm f0.8 lens
linked to a PC running motion capture software. Some other events were captured later on.

Robert Cobain, who participates in a similar network with Armagh Observatory, imaged a possible sprite from his home in Bangor, Co Down in
January 2005 while Graham Roche recorded sprites from south
Dublin in October 2011. The Armagh Observatory has also reported sprite
observations associated with thunderstorm activity on the night of the
24/25th July 2013.

Videos and higher resolution images of the NEMETODE sprites, together with
links to the other sprites mentioned here, are available at:
www.nemetode.org/sprites.htm

Note: Just alerting other stations here on the IFAS board that its possible that Mike Foylan,Trim, Co.Meath and Michael O’Connell,Kildare may also have captured these events.

Eamonn

Here is a really great article about sprites with video captures showing sprites in slow motion.
www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/trans...id=8081&viewall=true