HR: 0800h
AN: AE31B-0170    [Abstracts]
TI: Possible Detection of a Conjugate Sprite
AU: * Yair, Y Y
EM: yoavya@openu.ac.il
AF: Department of Life and Natural Sciences, The Open University of Israel, 108 Ravutski Street, Raanana, 43104 Israel
AU: Price, C G
EM: cprice@flash.tau.ac.il
AF: Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Haim Levanon Road, Tel-Aviv, 69978 Israel
AU: Israelevitch, P L
EM: peter@luna.tau.ac.il
AF: Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Haim Levanon Road, Tel-Aviv, 69978 Israel
AU: Devir, A D
EM: iardad@iard.org.il
AF: Department of Life and Natural Sciences, The Open University of Israel, 108 Ravutski Street, Raanana, 43104 Israel
AU: Sentman, D D
EM: dsentman@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, 903 Koyukuk Drive , Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320 United States
AU: Sao-Sabbas, F T
EM: fsaosabbas@dae.inpe.br
AF: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais - INPE, 1758 Ave. De Astronautas, Sao Jose dos Campos, SP 12201-970 Brazil
AU: Sato, M
EM: mitsu-sato@postman.riken.jp
AF: Computational Astrophysics Lab, RIKEN, 2-1, Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama, 351-0198 Japan
AU: Rodger, C J
EM: crodger@physics.otago.ac.nz
AF: Department of Physics, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, 12345 New Zealand
AU: Ziv, B
EM: baruchz@openu.ac.il
AF: Department of Life and Natural Sciences, The Open University of Israel, 108 Ravutski Street, Raanana, 43104 Israel
AU: Moalem, M
EM: meirmoalem@yahoo.com
AF: Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Haim Levanon Road, Tel-Aviv, 69978 Israel
AU: Greenberg, E
EM: erangree@post.tau.ac.il
AF: Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Haim Levanon Road, Tel-Aviv, 69978 Israel
AU: Yaron, O
EM: ofer@luna.tau.ac.il
AF: Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Haim Levanon Road, Tel-Aviv, 69978 Israel
AB: We report the detection of a transient luminous event (TLE) exhibiting an uncharacteristic large time delay and lateral displacement from any near-by thunderstorm. The event was imaged from the space shuttle Columbia during the MEIDEX sprite campaign in January 2003 (Yair et al., 2004) south of Madagascar above the Indian Ocean. It was delayed 0.23 seconds from a preceding visual flash and had a horizontal displacement $>$ 1000 km from the nearest lightning activity, values far larger than previously reported. The calculated brightness in the 860 (ñ40) nm filter was 310kR, and the morphology of the emitting volume did not resemble any known class of TLE (i.e. sprites, ELVES or halos). We propose that this emission was the result of a relativistic electron beam emitted from a thunderstorm at the magnetic conjugate hemisphere and impacting the lower mesosphere (Lehtinen et al., 2000). Analysis of meteorological data, satellite images and ground-based lightning locations suggests that lightning occurring in an eastern Mediterranean storm near Turkey may be the cause of this event south of Madagascar, which we interpret as a possible conjugate sprite.
DE: 3324 Lightning
DE: 2716 Energetic particles, precipitating
DE: 3304 Atmospheric electricity
SC: Atmospheric and Space Electricity [AE]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting